-    L  I   B    R.    I    s 

CHAR.LES 
WE  SLEY 
B   U  ILN  S 


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CAUSES  AND  CONSEQUENCES 


By  the  Same  Author 
Emerson  and  Other  Essays.     i2ino.    J1.25 


CAUSES 


AND 


CONSEQUENCES 


BY 
JOHN  JAY  CHAPMAN 


mSTANA  VTESLETAN  COLLEGE  LIET> 


■J^-i'...^ 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1899 
B*GK¥  MOUNTAIN  COIXEGE  LKBRART 

Bil}hi/;s.  Montana 


Copyright,  1898, 
By  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 


©nibtrsttg  iPrtss: 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


-^^? 


DEDICATED 


MEMBERS  OF  CLUB  C 


PREFACE 

As  we  unravel  political  knots,  they  resolve 
themselves  into  proverbs  and  familiar  truth, 
and  thus  our  explanation  becomes  a  treatise 
upon  human  nature,  —  a  profession  of  faith. 
The  idea  chat  man  is  an  unselfish  animal 
has  gradually  been  forced  upon  me,  by  the 
course  of  reflection  which  I  give  in  the  fol- 
lowing chapters,  in  the  order  in  which  it  oc- 
curred to  me.  The  chapters  are  little  more 
than  presentations  from  different  points  of 
view  of  this  one  idea.  The  chapters  on 
Politics  and  Society  seem  to  show  that  our 
political  corruptions  and  social  inferiorities 
can  be  traced  to  the  same  source,  —  namely, 
temporary  distortion  of  human  character  by 
the  forces  of  commerce.  The  chapter  on 
Education  is  a  study  on  the  law  of  intellect- 
ual growth,  and  shows  that  a  normal  and 
rounded  development  can  only  come  from  a 
use  of  the  faculties  very  different  from  that 
practised  by  the  average  American  since  the 
discovery  of  the  cotton  gin. 


PREFACE 

The  chapter  on  Democracy  is  a  review  of 
that  subject  by  the  light  of  the  conclusions  as 
to  the  Nature  of  Man,  arrived  at  in  the  Essay 
on  Education ;  and  it  is  seen  that  our  frame 
of  government  is  in  accord  with  sound  phi- 
losophy, and  is  a  constant  influence  tending 
to  correct  the  distortions  described  in  the 
first  two  chapters.  In  the  final  chapter  on 
Government,  some  illustrations  are  drawn 
together,  showing  that  the  whole  course  of 
reasoning  of  the  book  contains  nothing  novel, 
but  accords  with  the  ideals  and  with  the 
wisdom  of  the  world. 

The  book  itself  arose  out  of  an  attempt  to 
explain  an  election. 

J.  J.  C. 

ROKEBY,  June  lo,  1898. 


viii 


CONTENTS 

Pagb 

I.     Politics 3 

II.     Society 49 

III.  Education  ;  Froebel 8;^ 

IV.  Democracy 115 

V.      GoVERhTMENT I37 


POLITICS 


POLITICS 

MiSGOVERNMENT  in  the  United  States  is  an 
incident  in  the  history  of  commerce.  It  is 
part  of  the  triumph  of  industrial  progress. 
Its  details  are  easier  to  understand  if  studied 
as  a  part  of  the  commercial  development  of 
the  country  than  if  studied  as  a  part  of  gov- 
ernment, because  many  of  the  wheels  and 
cranks  in  the  complex  machinery  of  govern- 
ment are  now  performing  functions  so  per- 
verted as  to  be  unmeaning  from  the  point  of 
view  of  political  theory,  but  which  become 
perfectly  plain  if  looked  at  from  the  point  of 
view  of  trade. 

The  growth  and  concentration  of  capital 
which  the  railroad  and  the  telegraph  made 
possible  is  the  salient  fact  in  the  history  of 
the  last  quarter-century.  That  fact  is  at  the 
bottom  of  our  political  troubles.  It  was  in- 
evitable that  the  enormous  masses  of  wealth, 
springing  out  of  new  conditions  and  requir- 
ing new  laws,  should  strive  to  control  the 
3 


POLITICS 

legislation  and  the  administration  which 
touched  them  at  every  point.  At  the  pres- 
ent time,  we  cannot  say  just  what  changes 
were  or  were  not  required  by  enlightened 
theory.  It  is  enough  to  see  that  such 
changes  as  came  were  inevitable ;  and  noth- 
ing can  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  methods 
by  which  they  were  obtained  were  subversive 
of  free  government. 

Whatever  form  of  government  had  been  in 
force  in  America  during  this  era  would  have 
run  the  risk  of  being  controlled  by  capital, 
of  being  bought  and  run  for  revenue.  It 
happened  that  the  beginning  of  the  period 
found  the  machinery  of  our  government  in  a 
particularly  purchasable  state.  The  war  had 
left  the  people  divided  into  two  parties  which 
were  fanatically  hostile  to  each  other.  The 
people  were  party  mad.  Party  name  and 
party  symbols  were  of  an  almost  religious 
importance. 

At  the  very  moment  when  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  nation  had  been  exhausted  in  a  heroic 
war  which  left  the  Republican  party-manag- 
ers in  possession  of  the  ark  of  the  covenant, 
the  best  intellect  of  the  country  was  with- 
drawn from  public  affairs  and  devoted  to 
trade.  During  the  period  of  expansion  which 
followed,  the  industrial  forces  called  in  the 
.  4 


POLITICS 

ablest  men  of  the  nation  to  aid  them  in  get- 
ting control  of  the  machinery  of  government. 
The  name  of  king  was  never  freighted  with 
more  power  than  the  name  of  party  in  the 
United  States;  whatever  was  done  in  that 
name  was  right.  It  is  the  old  story :  there 
has  never  been  a  despotism  which  did  not 
rest  upon  superstition.  The  same  spirit 
that  made  the  Republican  name  all  power- 
ful in  the  nation  at  large  made  the  Demo- 
cratic name  valuable  in  Democratic  districts. 
The  situation  as  it  existed  was  made  to 
the  hand  of  trade.  Political  power  had  by 
the  war  been  condensed  and  packed  for  de- 
livery; and  in  the  natural  course  of  things 
the  political  trademarks  began  to  find  their 
way  into  the  coffers  of  the  capitalist.  The 
change  of  motive  power  behind  the  party 
organizations  —  from  principles,  to  money  — 
was  silently  effected  during  the  thirty  years 
which  followed  the  war.  Like  all  organic 
change,  it  was  unconscious.  It  was  under- 
stood by  no  one.  It  is  recorded  only  in  a 
few  names  and  phrases ;  as,  for  instance,  that 
part  of  the  organization  which  was  purchased 
was  called  the  "machine,"  and  the  general 
manager  of  it  became  known  as  the  "  boss. " 
The  external  political  history  of  the  country 
continued  as  before.  It  is  true  that  a  steady 
5 


POLITICS 

degradation  was  to  be  seen  in  public  life,  a 
steady  failure  of  character,  a  steady  decline 
of  decency.  But  questions  continued  to  be 
discussed,  and  in  form  decided,  on  their 
merits,  because  it  was  in  the  interest  of 
commerce  that  they  should  in  form  be  so 
decided.  Only  quite  recently  has  the  con- 
trol of  money  become  complete ;  and  there  are 
reasons  for  believing  that  the  climax  is  past. 

Let  us  take  a  look  at  the  change  on  a 
small  scale.  A  railroad  is  to  be  run  through 
a  country  town  or  small  city,  in  New  York 
or  Pennsylvania.  The  railroad  employs  a 
local  attorney,  naturally  the  ablest  attorney 
in  the  place.  As  time  goes  on,  various 
permits  for  street  uses  are  needed;  and 
instead  of  relying  solely  upon  popular  de- 
mand, the  attorney  finds  it  easier  to  bribe 
the  proper  officials.  All  goes  well :  the  rail- 
road thrives,  the  town  grows.  But  in  the 
course  of  a  year  new  permits  of  various 
kinds  are  needed.  The  town  ordinances  in- 
terfere with  the  road  and  require  amend- 
ment. There  is  to  be  a  town  election ;  and 
it  occurs  to  the  railroad's  attorney  that  he 
might  be  in  alliance  with  the  town  officers 
before  they  are  elected.  He  goes  to  the 
managers  of  the  party  which  is  likely  to 
6 


POLITICS 

win;  for  instance,  the  Republican  party. 
Everything  that  the  railroad  wants  is  really 
called  for  by  the  economic  needs  of  the 
town.  The  railroad  wants  only  fair  play 
and  no  factious  obstruction.  The  attorney 
talks  to  the  Republican  leader,  and  has  a 
chance  to  look  over  the  list  of  candidates, 
and  perhaps  even  to  select  some  of  them. 
The  railroad  makes  the  largest  campaign 
subscription  ever  made  in  that  part  of  the 
country.  The  Republican  leader  can  now 
employ  more  workers  to  man  the  polls,  and, 
if  necessary,  he  can  buy  votes.  He  must 
also  retain  some  fraction  of  the  contribution 
for  his  own  support,  and  distribute  the  rest 
in  such  manner  as  will  best  keep  his  "or- 
ganization "  together. 

The  party  wins,  and  the  rights  of  the  rail- 
road are  secured  for  a  year.  It  is  true  that 
the  brother  of  the  Republican  leader  is  em- 
ployed on  the  road  as  a  brakeman;  but  he  is 
a  competent  man. 

During  the  year,  a  very  nice  point  of  law 
arises  as  to  the  rights  of  the  railroad  to 
certain  valuable  land  claimed  by  the  town. 
The  city  attorney  is  an  able  man,  and  rea- 
sonable. In  spite  of  his  ability,  he  manages 
somehow  to  state  the  city's  case  on  an  un- 
tenable ground.  A  decision  follows  in  favor 
7 


POLITICS 

of  the  railroad.  At  the  following  election, 
the  city  attorney  has  become  the  Republi- 
can candidate  for  judge,  and  the  railroad's 
campaign  subscription  is  trebled.  In  the 
conduct  of  railroads,  even  under  the  best 
management,  accidents  are  common;  and 
while  it  is  true  that  important  decisions  are 
appealable,  a  trial  judge  has  enormous  powers 
which  are  practically  discretionary.  Mean- 
while, there  have  arisen  questions  of  local 
taxation  of  the  railroad's  property,  questions 
as  to  grade  crossings,  as  to  the  lighting  of 
cars,  as  to  time  schedules,  and  the  like. 
The  court  calendars  are  becoming  crowded 
with  railroad  business ;  and  that  business  is 
now  more  than  one  attorney  can  attend  to. 
In  fact,  the  half  dozen  local  lawyers  of 
prominence  are  railroad  men;  the  rest  of 
the  lawyers  would  like  to  be.  Every  one 
of  the  railroad  lawyers  receives  deferential 
treatment,  and,  when  possible,  legal  advan- 
tage in  all  of  the  public  offices.  The  com- 
munity is  now  in  the  control  of  a  ring,  held 
together  by  just  one  thing,  the  railroad  com- 
pany's subscription  to  the  campaign  fund. 

By  this  time  a  serious  scandal  has  occurred 

in  the  town,  — nothing  less  than  the  rumor 

of  a  deficit  in  the  town  treasurer's  accounts, 

and  the  citizens  are  concerned  about  it.    One 

8 


POLITICS 

of  the  railroad's  lawyers,  a  strong  party  man, 
happens  to  be  occupying  the  post  of  district 
attorney;  for  the  yearly  campaign  subscrip- 
tions continue.  This  district  attorney  is, 
in  fact,  one  of  the  committee  on  nomina- 
tions who  put  the  town  treasurer  into  office; 
and  the  Republican  party  is  responsible  for 
both.  No  prosecution  follows.  The  dis- 
trict attorney  stands  for  re-election. 

An  outsider  comes  to  live  in  the  town. 
He  wants  to  reform  things,  and  proceeds  to 
talk  politics.  He  is  not  so  inexperienced 
as  to  seek  aid  from  the  rich  and  respectable 
classes.  He  knows  that  the  men  who  sub- 
scribed to  the  railroad's  stock  are  the  same 
men  who  own  the  local  bank,  and  that  the 
manufacturers  and  other  business  men  of  the 
place  rely  on  the  bank  for  carrying  on  their 
business.  He  knows  that  all  trades  which 
are  specially  touched  by  the  law,  such  as 
the  liquor-dealers'  and  hotel-keepers',  must 
"stand  in"  with  the  administration;  so  also 
must  the  small  shopkeepers,  and  those  who 
have  to  do  with  sidewalk  privileges  and 
town  ordinances  generally.  The  newcomer 
talks  to  the  leading  hardware  merchant,  a 
man  of  stainless  reputation,  who  admits  that 
the  district  attorney  has  been  remiss;  but 
the  merchant  is  a  Republican,  and  says  that 
9 


POLITICS 

so  long  as  he  lives  he  will  vote  for  the  party 
that  saved  the  country.  To  vote  for  a  Dem- 
ocrat is  a  crime.  The  reformer  next  ap- 
proaches the  druggist  (whose  father-in-law 
is  in  the  employ  of  the  railroad),  and  re- 
ceives the  same  reply.  He  goes  to  the  flor- 
ist. But  the  florist  owns  a  piece  of  real 
estate,  and  has  a  theory  that  it  is  assessed 
too  high.  The  time  for  revising  the  assess- 
ment rolls  is  coming  near,  and  he  has  to  see 
the  authorities  about  that.  The  florist  agrees 
that  the  town  is  a  den  of  thieves;  but  he 
must  live;  he  has  no  time  to  go  into  theo- 
retical politics.  The  stranger  next  inter- 
views a  retired  grocer.  But  the  grocer  has 
lent  money  to  his  nephew,  who  is  in  the 
coal  business,  and  is  getting  special  rates 
from  the  railroad,  and  is  paying  off  the  debt 
rapidly.  The  grocer  would  be  willing  to 
help,  but  his  name  must  not  be  used. 

It  is  needless  to  multiply  instances  of 
what  every  one  knows.  After  canvassing 
the  whole  community,  the  stranger  finds  five 
persons  who  are  willing  to  work  to  defeat 
the  district  attorney:  a  young  doctor  of 
good  education  and  small  practice,  a  young 
lawyer  who  thinks  he  can  make  use  of  the 
movement  by  betraying  it,  a  retired  anti- 
slavery  preacher,  a  maiden  lady,  and  a  piano- 


POLITICS 

tuner.    The  district  attorney  is  re-elected  by 
an  overwhelming  vote. 

All  this  time  the  railroad  desires  only  a 
quiet  life.  It  takes  no  interest  in  politics. 
It  is  making  money,  and  does  not  want 
values  disturbed.     It  is  conservative. 

In  the  following  year  worse  things  hap- 
pen. The  town  treasurer  steals  more  money, 
and  the  district  attorney  is  openly  accused 
of  sharing  the  profits.  The  Democrats  are 
shouting  for  reform,  and  declare  that  they 
will  run  the  strongest  man  in  town  for  dis- 
trict attorney.  He  is  a  Democrat,  but  one 
who  fought  for  the  Union.  He  is  no  longer 
in  active  practice,  and  is,  on  the  whole,  the 
most  distinguished  citizen  of  the  place. 
This  suggestion  is  popular.  The  hardware 
merchant  declares  that  he  will  vote  the 
Democratic  ticket,  and  there  is  a  sensation. 
It  appears  that  during  all  these  years  there 
has  been  a  Democratic  organization  in  the 
town,  and  that  the  notorious  corruption  of 
the  Republicans  makes  a  Democratic  victory 
possible.  The  railroad  company  therefore 
goes  to  the  manager  of  the  Democratic  party, 
and  explains  that  it  wants  only  to  be  let 
alone.  It  explains  that  it  takes  no  interest 
in  politics,  but  that,  if  a  change  is  to  come, 
it  desires  only  that  So-and-So  shall  be  re- 

XI 


POLITICS 

tained,  and  it  leaves  a  subscription  with  the 
Democratic  manager.  In  short,  it  makes 
the  best  terms  it  can.  The  Democratic 
leader,  if  he  thinks  that  he  can  make  a  clean 
sweep,  may  nominate  the  distinguished  citi- 
zen, together  with  a  group  of  his  own  organ- 
ization comrades.  It  obviously  would  be  of 
no  use  to  him  to  name  a  full  citizens'  ticket. 
That  would  be  treason  to  his  party.  If  he 
takes  this  course  and  wins,  we  shall  have 
ring  rule  of  a  slightly  milder  type.  The 
course  begins  anew,  under  a  Democratic 
name;  and  it  may  be  several  years  before 
another  malfeasance  occurs. 

But  the  Republican  leader  and  the  rail- 
road company  do  not  want  war;  they  want 
peace.  They  may  agree  to  make  it  worth 
while  for  the  Democrats  not  to  run  the  dis- 
tinguished citizen.  A  few  Democrats  are 
let  into  the  Republican  ring.  They  are 
promised  certain  minor  appointive  offices, 
and  some  contracts  and  emoluments.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  Democrats  do  not  nominate 
the  distinguished  citizen.  The  hardware 
man  sees  little  choice  between  the  two  nom- 
inees for  district  attorney;  at  any  rate,  he 
will  not  vote  for  a  machine  Democrat,  and 
he  again  votes  for  his  party  nominee. 
All    the    reform    talk    simmers    down    to 

12 


POLITICS 

silence.     The  Republicans  are  returned  to 
power. 

The  town  is  now  ruled  by  a  Happy  Fam- 
ily. Stable  equilibrium  has  been  reached 
at  last.  Commercialism  is  in  control.  Hence- 
forth, the  railroad  company  pays  the  bills  for 
keeping  up  both  party  organizations,  and  it 
receives  care  and  protection  from  whichever 
side  is  nominally  in  power. 

The  party  leaders  have  by  this  time  be- 
come the  general  utility  men  of  the  railroad; 
they  are  its  agents  and  factotums.  The  boss 
is  the  handy  man  of  the  capitalist.  So  long 
as  the  people  of  the  town  are  content  to  vote 
on  party  lines  they  cannot  get  away  from  the 
railroad.  In  fact,  there  are  no  national  par- 
ties in  the  town.  A  man  may  talk  about 
them,  but  he  cannot  vote  for  one  of  them, 
because  they  do  not  exist.  He  can  vote 
only  for  or  against  the  railroad;  and  to  do 
the  latter,  an  independent  ticket  must  be 
nominated. 

It  must  not  be  imagined  that  any  part  of 
the  general  public  clearly  understands  this 
situation.  The  state  of  mind  of  the  Better 
Element  of  the  Republican  side  has  been 
seen.  The  good  Democrats  are  equally  dis- 
tressed. The  distinguished  citizen  ardently 
desires  to  oust  the  Republican  ring.  He 
13 


POLITICS 

subscribes  year  after  year  to  the  campaign 
fund  of  his  own  party,  and  declares  that  the 
defalcation  of  the  town  treasurer  has  given 
it  the  opportunity  of  a  generation.  The 
Democratic  organization  takes  his  money 
and  accepts  his  moral  support,  and  uses  it  to 
build  up  one  end  of  the  machine.  It  cries, 
"  Reform  !  Reform  !  Give  us  back  the  prin- 
ciples of  Jefferson  and  of  Tilden  !  " 

The  Boss-out-of-Power  must  welcome  all 
popular  movements.  He  must  sometimes 
accept  a  candidate  from  a  citizens'  commit- 
tee, sometimes  refuse  to  do  so.  He  must 
spread  his  mainsail  to  the  national  party 
wind  of  the  moment.  His  immense  advan- 
tage is  an  intellectual  one.  He  alone  knows 
the  principles  of  the  game.  He  alone  sees 
that  the  power  of  the  bosses  comes  from 
party  loyalty.  Croker  recently  stated  his 
case  frankly  thus :  "  A  man  who  would  de- 
sert his  party  would  desert  his  country." 

It  may  be  remarked,  in  passing,  that  New 
York  city  reached  the  Happy  Family  stage 
many  years  ago.  Tammany  Hall  is  in 
power,  being  maintained  there  by  the  great 
mercantile  interests.  The  Republican  party 
is  out  of  power,  and  its  organization  is  kept 
going  by  the  same  interests.  It  has  always 
been  the  ear-mark  of  an  enterprise  of  the 
u 


POLITICS 

first  financial  magnitude  in  New  York  that 
it  subscribed  to  both  campaign  funds.  The 
Republican  function  has  been  to  prevent  any 
one  from  disturbing  Tammany  Hall.  This 
has  not  been  difficult;  the  Republicans  have 
always  been  in  a  hopeless  minority,  and  the 
machine  managers  have  understood  this  per- 
fectly. Now  if,  by  the  simple  plan  of  de- 
nouncing Tammany  Hall,  and  appealing  to 
the  war  record  of  the  Republican  party,  they 
could  minimize  the  independent  vote  and  hold 
their  own  constituency,  Tammany  would  be 
safe.  The  matter  is  actually  more  complex 
than  this,  but  the  principle  is  obvious. 

To  return  to  our  country  town.  It  is  easy 
to  see  that  the  railroad  is  pouring  out  its 
money  in  the  systematic  corruption  of  the 
entire  community.  Even  the  offices  with 
which  it  has  no  contact  will  be  affected  by 
this  corruption.  Men  put  in  office  because 
they  are  tools  will  work  as  tools  only. 
Voters  once  bribed  will  thereafter  vote  for 
money  only.  The  subscribing  and  the  vot- 
ing classes,  whose  state  of  mind  is  outlined 
above,  are  not  purely  mercenary.  The  re- 
tired grocer,  the  florist,  the  druggist,  are  all 
influenced  by  mixed  motives,  in  which  per- 
sonal interest  bears  a  greater  or  a  smaller 
share.  Each  of  these  men  belongs  to  a 
party,  as  a  Brahmin  is  born  into  a  caste. 
15 


POLITICS 

His  spirit  must  suffer  an  agony  of  conver- 
sion before  he  can  get  free,  even  if  he  is 
poor.  If  he  has  property,  he  must  pay  for 
that  conversion  by  the  loss  of  money,  also. 

Since  1865  the  towns  throughout  the 
United  States  have  been  passing  through 
this  stage.  A  ring  was  likely  to  spring  up 
wherever  there  was  available  capital.  We 
hear  a  great  talk  about  the  failure  of  our  in- 
stitutions as  applied  to  cities,  as  if  it  were 
our  incapacity  to  deal  with  masses  of  peo- 
ple and  with  the  problems  of  city  expansion 
that  wrecked  us.  It  is  nothing  of  the  sort. 
There  is  intellect  and  business  capacity 
enough  in  the  country  to  run  the  Chinese 
Empire  like  clockwork.  Philosophers  state 
broadly  that  our  people  "prefer  to  live  in 
towns,"  and  cite  the  rush  to  the  cities  dur- 
ing the  last  thirty  years.  The  truth  is  that 
the  exploitation  of  the  continent  could  be 
done  most  conveniently  by  the  assembling 
of  business  men  in  towns;  and  hence  it  is 
that  the  worst  rings  are  found  in  the  larger 
cities.  But  there  are  rings  everywhere;  and 
wherever  you  see  one  you  will  find  a  factory 
behind  it.  If  the  population  had  remained 
scattered,  commerce  would  have  pursued 
substantially  the  same  course.  We  should 
have  had  the  rings  just  the  same.  It  is  per- 
16 


POLITICS 

fectly  true  that  the  wonderful  and  scientific 
concentration  of  business  that  we  have  seen 
in  the  past  thirty  years  gave  the  chance  for 
the  wonderful  and  scientific  concentration  of 
its  control  over  politics.  The  state  machine 
could  be  constructed  easily,  by  consolidating 
local  rings  of  the  same  party  name. 

The  boss  par  excellence  is  a  state  boss.  He 
is  a  comparatively  recent  development.  He 
could  exist  only  in  a  society  which  had  long 
been  preparing  for  him.  He  could  operate 
only  in  a  society  where  almost  every  class 
and  almost  every  individual  was  in  a  certain 
sense  corrupted.  The  exact  moment  of  his 
omnipotence  in  the  State  of  New  York,  for 
instance,  was  recorded  by  the  actions  of  the 
State  legislature.  Less  than  ten  years  ago, 
the  bribing  of  the  legislature  was  done  piece- 
meal and  at  Albany;  and  the  great  corpora- 
tions of  the  State  were  accustomed  to  keep 
separate  attorneys  in  the  capitol,  ready  for 
any  emergency.  But  the  economy  of  hav- 
ing the  legislature  corrupted  before  election 
soon  became  apparent.  If  the  party  organ- 
izations could  furnish  a  man  with  whom  the 
corporation  managers  could  contract  directly, 
they  and  their  directors  could  sleep  at  night 
The  state  boss  sprang  into  existence  to  meet 
2  17 


POLITICS 

this  need.  He  is  a  commercial  agent,  like  his 
little  local  prototype;  but  the  scope  of  his 
activities  is  so  great  and  their  directions  are 
so  various,  the  forces  that  he  deals  with  are 
so  complex  and  his  mastery  over  them  is  so 
complete,  that  a  kind  of  mystery  envelops 
him.  He  appears  in  the  newspapers  like  a 
demon  of  unaccountable  power.  He  is  the 
man  who  gives  his  attention  to  aiding  in  the 
election  of  the  candidates  for  state  office, 
and  to  retaining  his  hold  upon  them  after 
election.  His  knowledge  of  local  politics 
all  over  a  State,  and  the  handling  of  the  very 
large  sums  of  money  subscribed  by  sundry 
promoters  and  corporations,  explain  the  mir- 
acle of  his  control. 

The  government  of  a  State  is  no  more  than 
a  town  government  over  a  wide  area.  The 
methods  of  bribery  which  work  certain  gen 
eral  results  in  a  town  will  work  similar  re- 
sults in  a  State.  But  the  scale  of  operations 
is  vastly  greater.  The  State-controlled  busi- 
nesses, such  as  banking,  insurance,  and  the 
State  public  works,  and  the  liquor  traffic,  in- 
volve the  expenditure  of  enormous  sums  of 
money. 

The  effect  of  commercialism  on  politics  is 
best  seen  in  the  state  System.     The  manner 
of  nominating  candidates  shows  how  easily 
x8 


POLITICS 

the  major  force  in  a  community  makes  use 
of  its  old  customs. 

The  American  plan  of  party  government 
provides  for  primaries,  caucuses,  and  town, 
county,  and  State  conventions.  It  was  de- 
vised on  political  principles,  and  was  in- 
tended to  be  a  means  of  working  out  the 
will  of  the  majority,  by  a  gradual  delegation 
of  power  from  bottom  to  top.  The  exigen- 
cies of  commerce  required  that  this  machin- 
ery should  be  made  to  work  backwards,  — 
namely,  from  top  to  bottom.  It  was  abso- 
lutely necessary  for  commerce  to  have  a 
political  dictator;  and  this  was  found  to  be 
perfectly  easy.  Every  form  and  process  of 
nomination  is  gravely  gone  through  with, 
the  dictator  merely  standing  by  and  desig- 
nating the  officers  and  committee-men  at 
every  step.  There  is  something  positively 
Egyptian  in  the  formalism  that  has  been 
kept  up  in  practice,  and  in  the  state  of  mind 
of  men  who  are  satisfied  with  the  procedure. 

The  men  who,  in  the  course  of  a  party 
convention,  are  doing  this  marching  and 
countermarching,  this  forming  and  dissolv- 
ing into  committees  and  delegations,  and 
who  appear  like  acolytes  going  through  mys- 
tical rites  and  ceremonies,  are  only  self- 
seeking  men,  without  a  real  political  idea 
19 


POLITICS 

in  their  heads.  Their  evolutions  are  done 
to  be  seen  by  the  masses  of  the  people,  who 
will  give  them  party  support  if  these  forms 
are  complied  with. 

We  all  know  well  another  interesting  per- 
version of  function.  A  legislator  is  by  polit- 
ical theory  a  wise,  enlightened  man,  pledged 
to  intellectual  duties.  He  gives  no  bonds. 
He  is  responsible  only  under  the  Constitu- 
tion and  to  his  own  conscience.  Therefore, 
if  the  place  is  to  be  filled  by  a  dummy, 
almost  anybody  will  do.  A  town  clerk  must 
be  a  competent  man,  even  under  boss  rule; 
but  a  legislator  will  serve  the  need  so  long 
as  he  is  able  to  say  "ay"  and  "no."  The 
boss,  then,  governs  the  largest  and  the  most 
complex  business  enterprise  in  the  State; 
and  he  is  always  a  man  of  capacity.  He  is 
obliged  to  conduct  it  in  a  cumbersome  and 
antiquated  manner,  and  to  proceed  at  every 
step  according  to  precedent  and  by  a  series 
of  fictions.  When  we  consider  that  the 
legislators  and  governors  are,  after  all,  not 
absolute  dummies;  that  among  them  are 
ambitious  and  rapacious  men,  with  here  and 
there  an  enemy  or  a  traitor  to  the  boss  and 
to  his  patrons,  we  see  that  the  boss  must  be 
well  equipped  with  the  intellect  of  intrigue. 
And  remember  this:  he  must  keep  both 
20 


POLITICS 

himself  and  his  patrons  out  of  jail,  and  so 
far  as  possible  keep  them  clear  of  public 
reprobation. 

We  have  not  as  yet  had  any  national  boss, 
because  the  necessity  for  owning  Congress 
has  not  as  yet  become  continuous ;  and  the  in- 
terests which  have  bought  the  national  legis- 
lature at  one  time  or  another  have  done  it  by 
bribing  individuals,  in  the  old-fashioned  way. 

Turning  now  to  New  York  city,  we  find 
the  political  situation  very  similar  to  that  of 
the  country  town  already  described.  The  in- 
terests which  actually  control  the  businesses 
of  the  city  are  managed  by  very  few  individ- 
uals. It  is  only  that  the  sums  involved  are 
different.  One  of  these  men  is  president 
of  an  insurance  company  whose  assets  are 
^130,000,000;  another  is  president  of  a  sys- 
tem of  street  railways  with  a  capital  stock  of 
^30,000,000;  another  is  president  of  an  ele- 
vated road  system  with  a  capital  of  the  same 
amount ;  a  fourth  is  vice-president  of  a  pav- 
ing company  worth  ;^i 0,000, 000;  a  fifth  owns 
1^50,000,000  worth  of  real  estate;  a  sixth 
controls  a  great  railroad  system ;  a  seventh 
is  president  of  a  savings-bank  in  which 
^5,000,000  are  deposited;  and  so  on.  The 
commercial  ties  which  bind  the  community 
together  are  as  close  in  the  city  as  in  th^ 


POLITICS 

country  town.  The  great  magnates  live  in 
palaces,  and  the  lesser  ones  in  palaces,  also. 
The  hardware-dealer  of  the  small  town  is  in 
New  York  the  owner  of  iron-works,  a  man 
of  stainless  reputation.  The  florist  is  the 
owner  of  a  large  tract  of  land  within  the  city 
limits,  through  which  a  boulevard  is  about 
to  be  cut.  The  retired  merchant  has  be- 
come a  partner  of  his  nephew,  and  is  devel- 
oping one  of  the  suburbs  by  means  of  an 
extension  of  an  electric  road  system.  But 
the  commercial  hierarchy  does  not  stop  here; 
it  continues  radiating,  spreading  downward. 
All  businesses  are  united  by  the  instruments 
and  usages  which  the  genius  of  trade  has  de- 
vised. All  these  interests  together  repre- 
sent the  railroad  of  the  country  town.  They 
take  no  real  interest  in  politics,  and  they 
desire  only  to  be  let  alone. 

For  the  twenty  years  before  the  Strong 
administration  the  government  of  the  city 
was  almost  continuously  under  the  control 
of  a  ring,  or,  accurately  speaking,  of  a  Happy 
Family.  Special  circumstances  made  this 
ring  well  nigh  indestructible.  The  Boss- 
out-of-Power  of  the  Happy  Family  happens 
to  be  also  the  boss  of  the  State  legislature. 
He  performs  a  double  function.  This  is 
what  has  given  Piatt  his  extraordinary  power. 

23 


POLITICS 

It  will  have  been  noticed  that  some  of  the 
masses  of  wealth  above  mentioned  are  pe- 
culiarly subject  tp  State  legislation :  they 
subscribe  directly  to  the  State  boss's  fund. 
Some  are  subject  to  interference  from  the 
city  administration :  they  subscribe  to  the 
city  boss's  fund. 

We  see  that  by  the  receipt  of  his  fund  the 
State  boss  is  rendered  independent  of  the 
people  of  the  city.  He  can  use  the  State 
legislature  to  strengthen  his  hands  in  his 
dealings  with  the  city  boss.  After  all,  he 
does  not  need  many  votes.  He  can  buy 
enough  votes  to  hold  his  minority  together 
and  keep  Tammany  safely  in  power,  and  by 
now  and  then  taking  a  candidate  from  the 
citizens  he  advertises  himself  as  a  friend  of 
reform. 

As  to  the  Tammany  branch  of  the  con- 
cern, the  big  money  interests  need  specific 
and  often  illegal  advantages,  and  pay  heav- 
ily over  the  Tammany  counter.  But  as  we 
saw  before,  public  officers,  if  once  corrupted, 
will  work  only  for  money.  Every  business 
that  has  to  do  with  one  or  another  of  the 
city  offices  must  therefore  now  contribute 
for  "protection."  A  foreign  business  that 
is  started  in  this  city  subscribes  to  Tam- 
many Hall  as  a  visitor  writes  his  name  in 

22 


POLITICS 

a  book  at  a  watering-place.  It  gives  him 
the  run  of  the  town.  In  the  same  way,  the 
State-fearing  business  man  subscribes  to 
Piatt  for  "protection."  No  secret  is  made 
of  these  conditions.  The  business  man  re- 
gards the  reformer  as  a  monomaniac  \<^ho  is 
not  reasonable  enough  to  see  the  necessity 
for  his  tribute.  In  the  conduct  of  any  large 
business,  this  form  of  bribery  is  as  regular 
an  item  as  rent.  The  machinery  for  such 
bribery  is  perfected.  It  is  only  when  some 
blundering  attempt  is  made  by  a  corporation 
to  do  the  bribing  itself,  when  some  unbusi- 
nesslike attempt  is  made  to  get  rid  of  the 
middleman,  that  the  matter  is  discovered. 
A  few  boodle  aldermen  go  to  jail,  and  every 
one  is  scandalized.  The  city  and  county 
officers  of  the  new  city  of  New  York  will 
have  to  do  with  the  disbursing  of  ^70,000,000 
annually,  —  fully  one  half  of  it  in  the  con- 
duct of  administration.  The  power  of  these 
officers  to  affect  or  even  control  values,  by 
manipulation  of  one  sort  or  another,  is  fa- 
miliar to  us  all  from  experience  in  the  past. 

So  much  for  business.     Let  us  look  at  the 
law.     The  most  lucrative  practice  is  that  of 
an  attorney  who  protects  great  corporate  in- 
terests among  these  breakers.      He  needs 
a4 


POLITICS 

but  one  client ;  he  gets  hundreds.  The  mind 
of  the  average  lawyer  makes  the  same  uncon- 
scious allowance  for  bribery  as  that  of  the 
business  man.  Moreover,  we  cannot  over- 
look the  cases  of  simple  old-fashioned  brib- 
ery to  which  the  masses  of  capital  give  rise. 
In  a  political  emergency  any  amount  of 
money  is  forthcoming  in^mediately,  and  it  is 
given  from  aggregations  of  capital  so  large 
that  the  items  are  easily  concealed  in  the 
accounts.  Bribery,  in  one  form  or  another, 
is  part  of  the  unwritten  law.  It  is  atmos- 
pheric ;  it  is  felt  by  no  one.  The  most  able 
men  in  the  community  believe  that  society 
would  drop  to  pieces  without  bribery.  They 
do  not  express  it  in  this  way,  but  they  act 
upon  the  principle  in  an  emergency.  A 
leader  of  the  bar,  at  the  behest  of  his  Wall 
Street  clients,  begs  the  reform  police  board 
not  to  remove  Inspector  Byrnes,  who  is  the 
Jonathan  Wild  of  the  period.  The  bench  is 
fairly  able.  But  many  of  the  judges  on  the 
bench  have  paid  large  campaign  assessments 
in  return  for  their  nominations;  others  have 
given  notes  to  the  bosses.  This  reveals  the 
exact  condition  of  things.  In  a  corrupt  era 
the  judges  pay  cash.  Now  they  help  their 
friends.  The  son  or  the  son-in-law  of  a 
judge  is  sure  of  a  good  practice,  and  referees 


POLITICS 

are  appointed  from  lists  which  are  largely 
dictated  by  the  professional  politicians  of 
both  parties. 

It  would  require  an  encyclopaedia  to  state 
the  various  simple  devices  by  which  the 
same  principle  runs  through  every  depart- 
ment in  the  life  of  the  community.  Such 
an  encyclopaedia  for  New  York  city  would 
be  the  best  picture  of  municipal  misgovern- 
ment  in  the  United  States  during  the  com- 
mercial era.  But  one  main  fact  must  again 
be  noted:  this  great  complex  ring  is  held 
together  by  the  two  campaign  funds,  the 
Tammany  Hall  fund  and  the  Republican 
fund.  They  are  the  two  power  houses  which 
run  all  this  machinery. 

So  far  as  human  suffering  goes,  the  posi- 
tive evils  of  the  "system  fall  largely  on  the 
poor.  The  rich  buy  immunity,  but  the  poor 
are  persecuted,  and  have  no  escape.  This 
has  always  been  the  case  under  a  tyranny. 
What  else  could  we  expect  in  New  York.? 
The  Lexow  investigation  showed  us  the  con- 
dition of  the  police  force.  The  lower  courts, 
both  criminal  and  civil,  and  the  police  de- 
partment were  used  for  vote-getting  and  for 
money-getting  purposes.  They  were  serv- 
ing as  instruments  of  extortion  and  of  fa- 
voritism. But  in  the  old  police  courts  the 
26 


POLITICS 

foreigner  and  the  honest  poor  were  actually 
attacked.  Process  was  issued  against  them, 
their  business  was  destroyed,  and  they  were 
jailed  unless  they  could  buy  off.  This  sys- 
tem still  exists  to  some  extent  in  the  lower 
civil  courts. 

It  is  obvious  that  all  these  things  come  to 
pass  through  the  fault  of  no  one  in  particu- 
lar. We  have  to-day  reached  the  point  where 
the  public  is  beginning  to  understand  that 
the  iniquity  is  accomplished  by  means  of  the 
political  boss.  Every  one  is  therefore  abus- 
ing the  boss.  But  Piatt  and  Croker  are  not 
worse  than  the  men  who  continue  to  employ 
them  after  understanding  their  function. 
These  men  stand  for  the  conservative  moral- 
ity of  New  York,  and  for  standards  but  little 
lower  than  the  present  standards. 

Let  us  now  see  how  those  standards  came 
to  exist.  Imagine  a  community  in  which, 
for  more  than  a  generation,  the  government 
has  been  completely  under  boss  rule,  so  that 
the  system  has  become  part  of  the  habits  and 
of  the  thought  of  the  people,  and  consider 
what  views  we  might  expect  to  find  in  the 
hearts  of  the  citizens  of  such  a  community. 
The  masses  will  have  been  controlled  by 
what  is  really  bribery  and  terrorism,  but 
what  appears  in  the  form  of  a  very  plausible 

87 


POLITICS 

appeal  to  the  individual  on  the  ground  of 
self-interest.  For  forty  years  money  and 
place  have  been  corrupting  them.  Their 
whole  conception  of  politics  is  that  it  is  a 
matter  of  money  and  of  place.  The  well-to- 
do  will  have  been  apt  to  prosper  in  propor- 
tion as  they  have  made  themselves  serviceable 
to  the  dominant  powers,  and  have  become  part 
and  parcel  of  the  machinery  of  the  system. 
It  is  not  to  be  pretended  that  every  man  in 
such  a  community  is  a  rascal,  but  it  is  true 
that  in  so  far  as  his  business  brings  him  into 
contact  with  the  administrative  officers  every 
man  will  be  put  to  the  choice  between  lucra- 
tive malpractice  and  thankless  honesty.  A 
conviction  will  spread  throughout  the  com- 
munity that  nothing  can  be  done  without  a 
friend  at  court ;  that  honesty  does  not  pay, 
and  probably  never  has  paid  in  the  history 
of  the  world ;  that  a  boss  is  part  of  the 
mechanism  by  which  God  governs  mankind; 
that  property  would  not  be  safe  without  him ; 
and,  finally,  that  the  recognized  bosses  are 
not  so  bad  as  they  are  painted.  The  great 
masses  of  corporate  property  have  owners 
who  really  believe  that  the  system  of  gov- 
ernment which  enabled  them  to  make  money 
is  the  only  safe  government.  These  people 
cling  to  abuses  as  to  a  life-preserver.  They 
28 


POLITICS 

fear  that  an  honest  police  board  will  not  be 
able  to  bribe  the  thieves  not  to  steal  from 
them,  that  an  honest  State  insurance  depart- 
ment will  not  be  able  to  prevent  the  legis- 
lature from  pillaging  them.  It  is  absolutely 
certain  that  in  the  first  struggles  for  re- 
form the  weight  of  the  mercantile  classes 
will  be  thrown  very  largely  on  the  side  of 
conservatism. 

Now,  in  a  great  city  like  New  York  the 
mercantile  bourgeoisie  will  include  almost 
every  one  who  has  an  income  of  five  thou- 
sand dollars  a  year,  or  more.  These  men 
can  be  touched  by  the  bosses,  and  therefore, 
after  forty  years  of  tyranny,  it  is  not  to  be 
expected  that  many  of  those  who  wear  black 
coats  will  have  much  enthusiasm  for  reform. 
It  is  "  impracticable ; "  it  is  "  discredited ; " 
it  is  "expensive;"  it  is  "advocated  by  un- 
known men;"  it  speaks  ill  of  the  "respect- 
able ;  "  it  "  does  harm  "  by  exciting  the  poor 
against  the  rich;  it  is  "unbusinesslike"  and 
"visionary;"  it  is  "self-righteous."  We 
have  accordingly  had,  in  New  York  city,  a 
low  and  perverted  moral  tone,  an  incapacity 
to  think  clearly  or  to  tell  the  truth  when  we 
know  it.  This  is  both  the  cause  and  the 
consequence  of  bondage.  A  generation  of 
men  really  believe  that  honesty  is  bad  pol- 
39 


POLITICS 

icy,  and  continue  to  be  governed  by  Tam- 
many Hall. 

The  world  has  wondered  that  New  York 
could  not  get  rid  of  its  famous  incubus. 
The  gross  evils  as  they  existed  at  the  time 
of  Tweed  are  remembered.  The  great  im- 
provements are  not  generally  known.  Re- 
form has  been  slow,  because  its  leaders  have 
not  seen  that  their  work  was  purely  educa- 
tional. They  did  not  understand  the  polit- 
ical combination,  and  they  kept  striking  at 
Tammany  Hall.  Like  a  child  with  a  toy, 
they  did  not  see  that  the  same  mechanism 
which  caused  Punch  to  strike  caused  Judy's 
face  to  disappear  from  the  window. 

It  is  not  selfishness  and  treason  that  are 
mainly  responsible  for  the  discredit  which 
dogs  "reform."  It  is  the  inefficiency  of  up- 
right and  patriotic  men.  The  practical  diffi- 
culty with  reform  movements  in  New  York 
has  been  that  the  leaders  of  such  movements 
have  clung  to  old  political  methods.  These 
men  have  thought  that  if  they  could  hire  or 
imitate  the  regular  party  machinery,  they 
could  make  it  work  for  good.  They  would 
fight  banditti  with  bravi.  They  would  expel 
Tammany  Hall,  and  lo,  Tammany  is  within 
them. 

30 


POLITICS 

Is  it  a  failure  of  intellect  or  of  morality 
which  prevents  the  reformers  from  seeing 
that  idealism  is  the  shortest  road  to  their 
goal  ?  It  is  the  failure  of  both.  It  is  a  leg- 
acy of  the  old  tyranny.  In  one  sense  it  is 
corruption;  in  another  it  is  stupidity;  in 
every  sense  it  is  incompetence.  Political 
incompetence  is  only  another  name  for  moral 
degradation,  and  both  exist  in  New  York 
for  the  same  reason  that  they  exist  in  Tur- 
key.    They  are  the  offspring  of  blackmail. 

Well-meaning  and  public-spirited  men, 
who  have  been  engrossed  in  business  for  the 
best  part  of  their  lives,  are  perhaps  excus- 
able for  not  understanding  the  principles  on 
which  reform  moves.  Any  one  can  see  that 
if  what  was  wanted  was  merely  a  good  school 
board,  the  easiest  way  to  get  it  would  be  to 
go  to  Croker,  give  him  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars,  and  offer  to  let  him  alone  if  he  gave 
the  good  board.  But  until  very  recently 
nobody  could  see  that  putting  good  school 
commissioners  on  Piatt's  ticket  and  giving 
Piatt  the  hundred  thousand  dollars  was  pre- 
cisely the  same  thing. 

In  an  enterprise  whose  sole  aim  is  to  raise 

the  moral  standard,   idealism  always  pays. 

A  reverse  following  a  fight  for  principle,  like 

the  defeat  of  Low,  is  pure  gain.     It  records 

31 


POLITICS 

the  exact  state  of  the  cause.  It  educates  the 
masses  on  a  gigantic  scale.  The  results  of 
that  education  are  immediately  visible. 

On  the  other  hand,  all  compromise  means 
delay.  By  compromise,  the  awakened  faith 
of  the  people  is  sold  to  the  politicians  for  a 
mess  of  reform.  The  failures  and  mistakes 
of  Mayor  Strong's  administration  were  among 
the  causes  for  Mr.  Low's  defeat.  People 
said,  "  If  this  be  reform,  give  us  Tammany 
Hall."  Our  reformers  have  always  been  in 
hot  haste  to  get  results.  They  want  a  bal- 
ance-sheet at  the  end  of  every  year.  They 
think  this  will  encourage  the  people.  But 
the  people  recall  only  their  mistakes.  The 
long  line  of  reform  leaders  in  New  York  city 
are  remembered  with  contempt.  The  evil 
that  men  do  lives  after  them;  the  good  is 
oft  interred  with  their  bones. 

That  weakness  of  intellect  which  makes 
reformers  love  quick  returns  is  twin  brother 
to  a  certain  defect  of  character.  Personal 
vanity  is  very  natural  in  men  who  figure  as 
tribunes  of  the  people.  They  say,  "  Look  at 
Abraham  Lincoln,  and  how  he  led  the  people 
out  of  the  wilderness;  let  us  go  no  faster 
than  the  people  in  pushing  these  reforms; 
let  us  accept  half-measures ;  let  us  be  Abra- 
ham Lincoln."  The  example  of  Lincoln  has 
32 


POLITICS 

wrecked  many  a  promising  young  man ;  for 
really  Lincoln  has  no  more  to  do  with  the 
case  than  Julius  Caesar.  As  soon  as  the 
reformers  give  up  trying  to  be  statesmen, 
and  perceive  that  their  own  function  is 
purely  educational,  and  that  they  are  mere 
anti-slavery  agitators  and  persons  of  no  ac- 
count whatever,  they  will  succeed  better. 

As  to  the  methods  of  work  in  reform,  — 
whether  it  shall  be  by  clubs  or  by  pam- 
phlets, by  caucus  or  by  constitution,  — they 
will  be  developed.  Executive  capacity  is 
simply  that  capacity  which  is  always  found 
in  people  who  really  want  something  done. 

In  New  York,  the  problem  is  not  to  oust 
Tammany  Hall;  another  would  arise  in  a 
year.  It  is  to  make  the  great  public  under- 
stand the  boss  system,  of  which  Tammany 
is  only  a  part.  As  fast  as  the  reformers  see 
that  clearly  themselves,  they  will  find  the 
right  machinery  to  do  the  work  in  hand.  It 
may  be  that,  like  the  Jews,  we  shall  have  to 
spend  forty  years  more  in  the  wilderness, 
until  the  entire  generation  that  lived  under 
Pharaoh  has  perished.  But  education  nowa- 
days marches  quickly.  The  progress  that 
has  been  made  during  the  last  seven  years 
in  the  city  of  New  York  gives  hope  that 
3  33 


POLITICS 

within  a  decade  a  majority  of  the  voters  will 
understand  clearly  that  all  the  bosses  are  in 
league. 

In  1890,  this  fact  was  so  little  understood 
by  the  managers  of  an  anti-Tammany  move- 
ment which  sprang  up  in  that  year  that,  after 
raising  a  certain  stir  and  outcry,  they  put 
in  the  field  a  ticket  made  up  exclusively  of 
political  hacks,  whose  election  would  have 
left  matters  exactly  where  they  stood.  The 
people  at  large,  led  by  the  soundest  political 
instinct,  re-elected  Tammany  Hall,  and  gave 
to  sham  reform  the  rebuff  it  deserved.  In 
1894,  after  the  Lexow  investigation  had  kept 
the  town  at  fever-heat  of  indignation  all 
summer.  Mayor  Strong  was  nominated  by 
the  Committee  of  Seventy,  under  an  arrange- 
ment with  Piatt.  The  excitement  was  so 
great  that  the  people  at  large  did  not  exam- 
ine Mr.  Strong's  credentials.  He  was  a 
Republican  merchant,  and  in  no  way  iden- 
tified with  the  boss  system.  Mayor  Strong's 
administration  has  been  a  distinct  advance, 
in  many  ways  encouraging.  Its  errors  and 
weaknesses  have  been  so  clearly  traceable  to 
the  system  which  helped  elect  him  that  it 
has  been  in  the  highest  degree  valuable  as 
an  object-lesson.  In  1895,  only  one  year 
after  Mayor  Strong's  election,  the  fruits  of 
34 


POLITICS 

his  administration  could  not  yet  be  seen. 
In  that  year  a  few  judges  and  minor  local 
officers  were  to  be  chosen.  By  this  time  the 
"citizens'  movement"  had  become  a  regular 
part  of  a  municipal  election.  A  -group  of 
radicals,  the  legatees  of  the  Strong  cam- 
paign, had  for  a  year  been  enrolled  in  clubs 
called  Good  Government  Clubs.  These  men 
took  the  novel  course  of  nominating  a  com- 
plete ticket  of  their  own.  This  was  con- 
sidered a  dangerous  move  by  the  moderate 
reformers,  who  were  headed  by  the  Chamber 
of  Commerce.  The"  Chamber  of  Commerce 
and  its  well-meaning  supporters  then  took  a 
step  which,  from  an  educational  standpoint, 
turned  out  to  be  most  important.  In  their 
terror  lest  Tammany  Hall  should  gain  the 
prestige  of  a  by-election,  they  made  an  ar- 
rangement with  Piatt,  and  were  allowed  to 
name  some  candidates  on  his  ticket.  This 
was  the  famous  "fusion,"  which  the  Good 
Government  men  attacked  with  as  much 
energy  as  they  might  have  expended  on 
Tammany  Hall.  A  furious  campaign  of 
crimination  between  the  two  reform  fac- 
tions followed,  and  of  course  Tammany  was 
elected. 

The  difference  between  the  Good  Govern- 
ment   men    (the    Goo-Goos,    as    they  were 
35 


POLITICS 

called)  and  the  Fusionists  was  entirely  one 
of  political  education.  The  Goo-Goo  mind 
had  advanced  to  the  point  of  seeing  that 
Piatt  was  a  confederate  of  Tammany  and 
represented  one  wing  of  the  great  machine. 
To  give  him  money  was  useless;  to  lend 
him  respectability  was  infamous.  These 
ideas  were  disseminated  by  the  press;  and 
it  was  immaterial  that  they  were  dissemi- 
nated in  the  form  of  denunciations  of  the 
Good  Government  Clubs.  The  people  at 
large  began  to  comprehend  clearly  what  they 
had  always  instinctively  believed.  There 
was  now  a  nucleus  of  men  in  the  town  who 
preferred  Tammany  Hall  to  any  victory  that 
would  discredit  reform. 

It  may  be  noted  that  the  Good  Govern- 
ment Clubs  polled  less  than  one  per  cent  of 
the  vote  cast  in  that  election;  and  that  in 
the  recent  mayoralty  campaign  the  Citizens' 
Union  ran  Mr.  Low  on  the  Good  Govern- 
ment platform,  and  polled  150,000  votes. 
In  this  same  election,  the  straight  Republi- 
can ticket,  headed  by  Tracy,  polled  100,000 
votes,  and  Tammany  polled  about  as  many 
as  both  its  opponents  together.  A  total  of 
about  40,000  votes  were  cast  for  George  and 
other  candidates. 

Much  surprise  has   been  expressed  that 
36 


POLITICS 

there  should  be  100,000  Republicans  in  New 
York  whose  loyalty  to  the  party  made  them 
vote  a  straight  ticket  with  the  certainty  of 
electing  Tammany  Hall ;  but  in  truth,  when 
we  consider  the  history  of  the  city,  we  ought 
rather  to  be  surprised  at  the  great  size  of  the 
vote  for  Mr.  Low.  He  was  the  man  who 
arranged  the  fusion  of  1895.  It  was  entirely 
due  to  a  lack  of  clear  thinking  and  of  politi- 
cal courage  that  such  an  arrangement  was 
then  made.  Two  years  ago  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  did  not  clearly  understand  the 
evils  that  it  was  fighting.  Is  it  a  wonder 
that  100,000  individual  voters  are  still  back- 
ward in  their  education  ?  If  we  discount  the 
appeal  of  self-interest,  which  determined 
many  of  them,  there  are  probably  some 
75,000  Republicans  whose  misguided  party 
loyalty  obscured  their  view  and  deadened 
their  feelings.  They  cannot  be  said  to  hate 
bad  government  very  much.  They  do  not 
think  Tammany  Hall  so  very  bad,  after  all. 
As  the  London  papers  said,  the  dog  has 
returned  to  his  vomit.  It  is  unintelligent 
to  abuse  them.  They  are  the  children  of 
the  age.  A  few  years  ago  we  were  all  such 
as  they.  Of  Mr.  Low's  150,000  supporters, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  are  probably  at 
least  40,000  who  would  vote  through  thick 
37 


POLITICS 

and  thin  for  the  principles  which  his  cam- 
paign stood  for. 

Any  one  who  is  a  little  removed  by  time 
or  by  distance  from  New  York  knows  that 
the  city  cannot  have  permanent  good  govern- 
ment until  a  clear  majority  of  our  500,000 
voters  shall  develop  what  the  economists 
call  an  "  effective  desire  "  for  it.  It  is  not 
enough  merely  to  want  reform.  The  major- 
ity must  know  how  to  get  it.  For  educa- 
tional purposes,  the  intelligent  discussion 
throughout  the  recent  campaign  is  worth  all 
the  effort  that  it  cost.  The  Low  campaign 
was  notable  in  another  particular.  The 
banking  and  the  mercantile  classes  sub- 
scribed liberally  to  the  citizens'  campaign 
fund.  They  are  the  men  who  have  had  the 
most  accurate  knowledge  of  the  boss  system, 
because  they  support  it.  At  last  they  have 
dared  to  expose  it.  Indeed,  there  was  a  rent 
in  Wall  Street.  The  great  capitalists  and 
the  promoters  backed  Tammany  and  Piatt, 
as  a  matter  of  course;  but  many  individuals 
of  power  and  importance  in  the  street  came 
out  strongly  for  Low.  They  acted  at  per- 
sonal risk,  with  courage,  out  of  conscience. 
The  great  pendulum  of  wealth  has  swung 
toward  decency.  It  is  very  difficult  to  use 
this  or  any  money  in  the  cause  of  reform 
38 


POLITICS 

without  doing  more  harm  than  good.  But 
the  money  is  not  the  main  point;  the  per- 
sonal influence  of  the  men  who  give  it 
operates  more  powerfully  than  the  money. 
Hereafter  reform  will  be  respectable.  The 
professional  classes  are  pouring  into  it.  The 
young  men  are  re-entering  politics.  Its  victory 
is  absolutely  certain,  and  will  not  be  distant. 

The  effect  of  public-spirited  activity  on 
the  character  is  very  rapid.  Here  again  we 
cannot  separate  the  cause  from  the  conse- 
quence; but  it  is  certain  that  the  moral  tone 
of  the  community  is  changing  very  rapidly 
for  the  better,  and  that  the  thousands  of  men 
who  gje  at  this  moment  preparing  to  take 
part  in  the  next  citizens'  campaign,  and  who 
count  public  activity  as  one  of  the  regular 
occupations  of  their  lives,  are  affecting  the 
social  and  commercial  life  of  New  York, 
The  young  men  who  are  working  to  reform 
politics  find  in  it  not  only  the  satisfaction  of 
a  religious  instinct,  but  an  excitement  which 
business  cannot  provide. 

One  effect  of  the  commercial  supremacy 
has  been  to  make  social  life  intolerably  dull, 
by  dividing  people  into  cliques  and  trade 
iHiions.  The  millionaire  dines  with  the 
millionaire,  the  artist  with  the  artist,  the 
39 


POLITICS 

hat-maker  with  the  hat-maker,  gentlefolk 
with  gentlefolk.  All  of  these  sets  are 
equally  uninspiring,  equally  frightened  at 
a  strange  face.  The  hierarchy  of  commerce 
is  dull.  The  intelligent  people  in  America 
are  dull,  because  they  have  no  contact,  no 
social  experience.  Their  intelligence  is  a 
clique  and  wears  a  badge.  They  think  they 
are  not  affected  by  the  commercialism  of 
the  times;  but  their  attitude  of  mind  is  pre- 
cisely that  of  a  lettered  class  living  under  a 
tyranny.  They  flock  by  themselves.  It  is 
certain  that  the  cure  for  class  feeling  is 
public  activity.  The  young  jeweller,  the 
young  printer,  and  the  golf-player,  each, 
after  a  campaign  in  which  they  have  been 
fighting  for  a  principle,  finds  that  social 
enjoyment  lies  in  working  with  people  un- 
like himself,  for  a  common  object.  Reform 
movements  bring  men  into  touch,  into 
struggle  with  the  powers  that  are  really 
shaping  our  destinies,  and  show  them  the 
sinews  and  bones  of  the  social  organism. 
The  absurd  social  prejudices  which  unman 
the  rich  and  the  poor  alike  vanish  in  a  six 
weeks'  campaign.  Indeed,  the  exhilaration 
of  real  life  is  too  much  for  many  of  the 
reformers.  Even  bankers  neglect  their  busi- 
ness, and  dare  not  meet  their  partners,  and 
40 


POLITICS 

a  dim  thought  crosses  their  minds  that  per- 
haps the  most  enlightened  way  to  spend 
money  is,  not  to,  make  it,  but  to  invest  their 
energies  directly  in  life. 

The  reasons  for  believing  that  the  boss 
system  has  reached  its  climax  are  manifold. 
Some  of  them  have  been  stated,  others  may 
be  noted.  In  the  first  place,  the  railroads  are 
built.  Business  is  growing  more  settled.  The 
sacking  of  the  country's  natural  resources 
goes  on  at  a  slo^'er  pace.  It  is  a  matter  of 
history,  that  economic  laws  did  so  operate, 
that  the  New  York  Central  Railroad  controlled 
the  State  legislature  during  the  period  of  the 
building  and  consolidation  of  the  many  small 
roads  which  make  up  the  present  great  system. 
But  the  conditions  have  changed.  Bribery, 
like  any  other  crime,  may  be  explained  by 
an  emergency;  but  everyone  believes  that 
bribery  is  not  a  permanent  necessity  in  the 
running  of  a  railroad,  and  this  general  belief 
will  determine  the  practices  of  the  future. 
Public  opinion  will  not  stand  the  abuses ;  and 
without  the  abuse  where  is  the  profit  ?  In 
many  places,  the  old  system  of  bribery  is 
still  being  continued  out  of  habit,  and  at  a 
loss.  The  corporations  can  get  what  they 
(        41 


POLITICS 

want  more  cheaply  by  legal  methods,  and 
they  are  discovering  this.  In  the  second 
place,  the  boss  system  is  now  very  generally 
understood.  The  people  are  no  longer  de- 
ceived. The  ratio  between  party  feeling  and 
self-interest  is  changing  rapidly,  in  the  mind 
of  the  average  man.  It  was  the  mania  of 
party  feeling  that  supported  the  boss  sys- 
tem and  rendered  political  progress  impos- 
sible, and  party  feeling  is  dying  out.  We 
have  seen,  for  instance,  that  those  men 
who,  by  the  accident  of  the  war,  were  shaken 
in  their  party  loyalty,  have  been  the  most 
politically  intelligent  class  in  the  nation. 
The  Northern  Democrats,  who  sided  with 
their  opponents  to  save  the  Union,  were 
the  first  men  to  be  weaned  of  party  pre- 
judice, and  from  their  ranks,  accordingly, 
came  civil  service  reformers,  tariff  refor 
mers,  etc. 

It  is  noteworthy,  also,  that  the  Jewish 
mind  is  active  in  all  reform  movements. 
The  isolation  of  the  race  has  saved  it  from 
party  blindness,  and  has  given  scope  to  its 
extraordinary  intelligence.  The  Hebrew 
prophet  first  put  his  finger  on  blackmail  as 
the  curse  of  the  world,  and  boldly  laid  the 
charge  at  the  door  of  those  who  profited  Py 
the  abuse.  It  was  the  Jew  who  perceived 
42 


POLITICS 

that,  in  the  nature  of  things,  the  rich  and 
the  powerful  in  a  community  will  be  tram- 
melled up  and  identified  with  the  evils  of  the 
times.  The  wrath  of  the  Hebrew  prophets 
and  the  arraignments  of  the  New  Testament 
owe  part  of  their  eternal  power  to  their 
recognition  of  that  fact.  They  record  an 
economic  law. 

Moreover,  time  fights  for  reform.  The 
old  voters  die  off,  and  the  young  men  care 
little  about  party  shibboleths.  Hence  these 
non- partisan  movements.  Every  election, 
local  or  national,  which  causes  a  body  of 
men  to  desert  their  party  is  a  blow  at  the 
boss  system.  These  movements  multiply 
annually.  They  are  emancipating  the  small 
towns  throughout  the  Union,  even  as  com- 
merce was  once  disfranchising  them.  As 
party  feeling  dies  out  in  a  man's  mind,  it 
leaves  him  with  a  clearer  vision.  His  con- 
science begins  to  affect  his  conduct  very 
seriously,  when  he  sees  that  a  certain  course 
is  indefensible.  It  is  from  this  source  that 
the  reform  will  come. 

The  voter  will  see  that  it  is  wrong  to  sup- 
port the  subsidized  boss,  just  as  the  capi- 
talist has  already  begun  to  recoil  from  the 
monster  which  he  created.  He  sees  that  it 
is  wrong  at  the  very  moment  when  he  is 
42 


POLITICS 

beginning  to  find  it  unprofitable.     The  old 
trademark  has  lost  its  value. 

The  citizens'  movement  is,  then,  a  purge 
to  take  the  money  out  of  politics.  The 
stronger  the  doses,  the  quicker  the  cure.  If 
the  citizens  maintain  absolute  standards,  the 
old  parties  can  regain  their  popular  support 
only  by  adopting  those  standards.  All  citi- 
zens' movements  are  destined  to  be  tempo- 
rary; they  will  vanish,  to  leave  our  politics 
purified.  But  the  work  they  do  is  as  broad 
as  the  nation. 

The  question  of  boss  rule  is  of  national 
importance.  The  future  of  the  country  is 
at  stake.  Until  this  question  is  settled,  all 
others  are  in  abeyance.  The  fight  against 
money  is  a  fight  for  permission  to  decide 
questions  on  their  merits.  The  last  presi- 
dential election  furnished  an  illustration  of 
this.  At  a  private  meeting  of  capitalists 
held  in  New  York  City,  to  raise  money  for 
the  McKinley  campaign,  a  very  important 
man  fervidly  declared  that  he  had  already 
subscribed  ;^5ooo  to  "buy  Indiana,"  and  that 
if  called  on  to  do  so  he  would  subscribe 
$5000  more!  He  was  greeted  with  cheers 
for  his  patriotism.  Many  of  our  best  citi- 
zens believe  not  only  that  money  bought 
44 


POLITICS 

that  election,  but  that  the  money  was  well 
spent,  because  it  averted  a  panic.  These 
men  do  not  believe  in  republican  institu- 
tions; they  have  found  something  better. 

This  is  precisely  the  situation  in  New 
York  city.  The  men  who  subscribed  to 
the  McKinley  campaign  fund  are  the  same 
men  who  support  Tammany  Hall.  In  1896 
they  cried,  "We  cannot  afford  Bryan  and 
his  panic!"  In  1897  the  same  men  in  New 
York  cried,  "We  cannot  afford  Low  and 
reform ! "  That  is  what  was  decided  in  each 
case.  Yet  it  is  quite  possible  that  the 
quickest,  wisest,  and  cheapest  way  of  deal- 
ing with  Bryan  would  have  been  to  allow 
him  and  his  panic  to  come  on,  —  fighting 
them  only  with  arguments,  which  immediate 
consequences  would  have  driven  home  very 
forcibly.  That  is  the  way  to  educate  the 
masses  and  fit  them  for  self-government; 
and  it  is  the  only  way. 

In  this  last  election  the  people  of  New 
York  have  crippled  Piatt.  It  is  a  service 
done  to  the  nation.  Its  consequences  are  as 
yet  not  understood;  for  the  public  sees  only 
the  gross  fact  that  Tammany  is  again  in 
power. 

But  the  election  is  memorable.  It  is  a 
sign  of  the  times.  The  grip  of  commerce 
45 


POLITICS 

is  growing  weaker,  the  voice  of  conscience 
louder.  A  phase  in  our  history  is  passing 
away.  That  phase  was  predestined  from  the 
beginning. 

The  war  did  no  more  than  intensify  ex- 
isting conditions,  both  commercial  and  po- 
litical. It  gave  sharp  outlines  to  certain 
economic  phenomena,  and  made  them  dra- 
matic. It  is  due  to  the  war  that  we  are  now 
able  to  disentangle  the  threads  and  do  jus- 
tice to  the  nation. 

The  corruption  that  we  used  to  denounce 
so  fiercely  and  understand  so  little  was  a 
phase  of  the  morality  of  an  era  which  is 
already  vanishing.  It  was  as  natural  as  the 
virtue  which  is  replacing  it;  it  will  be  a 
curiosity  almost  before  we  have  done  study- 
ing it.  We  see  that  our  institutions  were 
particularly  susceptible  to  this  disease  of 
commercialism,  and  that  the  sickness  was 
acute,  but  that  it  was  not  mortal.  Our  in- 
stitutions survived. 


46 


SOCIETY 


II 

SOCIETY 

Our  institutions  have  survived,  the  perils 
of  boss  rule  are  past,  and  we  may  look  back 
upon  the  system  with  a  kind  of  awe,  and 
recognize  how  easily  the  system  might  have 
overthrown  our  institutions  and  ushered  in 
a  period  which  history  would  have  recorded 
as  the  age  of  the  State  Tyrants. 

Let  us  imagine  that  some  State  like  Penn- 
sylvania, on  which  the  boss  system  had  been 
so  firmly  fixed  that  a  boss  was  able  to  be- 
queath his  seat  in  the  United  States  Senate 
to  his  son,  had  shown  forth  an  ambitious 
man,  a  ruler  who  realized  that  his  function 
was  not  one  of  business,  but  one  of  govern- 
ment ;  let  us  imagine  that  a  President  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad,  some  man  of  great 
capacity,  had  undertaken  to  rule  the  State. 
He  would,  by  his  position  as  State  boss, 
have  been  able  gradually  to  do  away  with 
the  petty  bosses  and  petty  abuses.  He 
would  give  the  State  a  general  cities  law, 
good  schools,  clean  streets,  speedy  justice; 
4  49 


SOCIETY 

every  necessary  municipal  improvement. 
Gas,  water,  boulevards  would  be  supplied 
with  an  economy  positively  startling  to  a 
generation  accustomed  to  jobs.  He  would 
destroy  the  middlemen  as  Louis  XI.  de- 
stroyed the  nobles,  and  give  to  his  State,  for 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  country, 
good  government.  A  benign  tyranny,  with 
every  department  in  the  hands  of  experts, 
makes  the  strongest  form  of  government  in 
the  world.  Every  class  is  satisfied.  Penn- 
sylvania would  have  been  famous  the  world 
over.  Its  inhabitants  would  have  been  proud 
of  it;  foreigners  would  have  written  books 
about  it;  other  States  would  have  imitated  it. 

Meanwhile  the  power  of  self-government 
would  have  been  lost. 

Biennial  sessions  of  the  Legislature  are 
already  a  favorite  device  for  minimizing  the 
evils  of  Legislatures.  But  the  dictator 
would  have  desired  to  discourage  popular 
assemblies.  The  whole  business  world 
would  have  backed  the  boss,  in  his  plan  for 
quinquennial  or  decennial  sessions.  Once 
give  way  to  the  laziness,  once  cater  to  the 
inertia  and  selfishness  of  the  citizen,  and  he 
sinks  into  slumber. 

Our  feeble  and  floundering  citizens'  move- 
ments in  New  York  during  the  last  ten 
SO 


SpCIETY 

years  show  us  how  hard  it  i§  to  recover  the 
power  of  self-government  when  once  lost; 
how  gradual  the  gain,  even  under  the  most 
stimulating  conditions  of  misrule.  Given 
thirty  years  of  able  administration  by  a 
single  man,  and  the  boss  system  would  have 
sunk  so  deep  into  the  popular  mind,  the 
arctic  crust  of  prejudice  and  incompetence 
would  have  frozen  so  deep,  that  it  might 
easily  take  two  hundred  years  for  the  com- 
munity to  come  to  life.  Recovery  could 
only  come  through  the  creeping  in  of  abuses, 
through  the  decentralization  of  the  great 
tyranny.  And  as  each  abuse  arose,  the  popu- 
lation would  clamor  to  the  dictator  and  beg 
him  to  correct  it.  After  a  while  a  few 
thinkers  would  arise  who  would  see  that  the 
only  way  to  revive  our  institutions  was  by 
the  painstaking  education  of  the  people. 
The  stock  in  trade  of  these  teachers  would 
be  the  practical  abuses,  and  very  often  they 
would  be  obliged  to  urge  upon  the  people  a 
course  which  would  make  the  abuses  tempo- 
rarily more  acute. 

We  have  escaped  an  age  of  tyrants,  be- 
cause the  eyes  of  the  bosses  and  their  mas- 
ters were  fixed  on  money.  They  were  not 
ambitious.  Government  was  an  annex  to 
trade.  To  certain  people  tbe  l^as  appears 
SI 


SOCIETY 

as  a  ruler  of  men.  If  proof  were  needed 
that  he  is  a  hired  man  employed  to  do  the 
dirty  work  of  others,  what  better  proof  could 
we  have  than  this:  No  one  of  all  the  hun- 
dreds of  bosses  thrown  up  during  the  last 
thirty  years  has  ever  lifted  himself  out  of 
his  sphere,  or  even  essayed  to  rule. 

That  devotion  of  the  individual  to  his 
bank  account  which  created  the  boss  and 
saved  us  from  the  dictator  must  now  be 
traced  back  into  business. 

For  the  sake  of  analysis  it  is  convenient 
now  to  separate  and  again  not  to  separate 
the  influences  of  business  proper  from  the 
influences  of  dishonesty,  but  in  real  life 
they  are  one  thing.  Dishonesty  is  a  mere 
result  of  excessive  devotion  to  money-mak- 
ifig.  The  general  and  somewhat  indefinite 
body  of  rules  which  are  considered  "  honest  " 
change  from  time  to  time.  I  call  a  thing 
dishonest  when  it  offends  my  instinct.  The 
next  man  may  call  it  honest.  The  question 
is  settled  by  society  at  large,  "  What  can  a 
man  do  and  remain  in  his  club  ? "  That 
gives  the  practical  standards  of  a  community. 
The  devotion  of  the  individual  to  his  bank 
account  gives  the  reason  why  the  financier 
and  his  agent,  the  boss,  could  always  find 
'52 


SOCIETY 

councilmen,  legislators,  judges,  lawyers,  to 
be  their  jackals,  or  to  put  the  equation  with 
the  other  end  first,  it  is  the  reason  why  the 
legislators  could  always  combine  to  black- 
mail the  capitalist:  this  political  corruption 
is  a  mere  spur  and  offshoot  of  our  business 
corruption.  We  know  more  about  it,  be- 
cause politics  cannot  be  carried  on  wholly 
in  the  dark.  Business  can.  The  main  facts 
are  known.  Companies  organize  subsidiary 
companies  to  which  they  vote  the  money  of 
the  larger  company  —  cheating  their  stock- 
holders. The  railroad  men  get  up  small 
roads  and  sell  them  to  the  great  roads  which 
they  control  —  cheating  their  stockholders. 
The  purchasing  agents  of  many  great  en- 
terprises cheat  the  companies  as  a  matter 
of  course,  not  by  a  recognized  system  of 
commissions  —  like  French  cooks  —  but  by 
stealth.  So  in  trade,  you  cannot  sell  goods 
to  the  retailers,  unless  you  corrupt  the  proper 
person.  It  is  all  politics.  All  our  politics 
is  business  and  our  business  is  politics. 

There  is  something  you  want  to  do,  and 
the  "  practical  man  "  is  the  man  who  knows 
the  ropes,  knows  who  is  the  proper  person 
to  be  "seen."  The  slang  word  gives  a  pic- 
ture of  the  times  —  to  "  see  "  a  man  means 
to  bribe  him. 

S3 


SOCIETY 

But  let  no  one  think  that  dishonesty  or 
anything  else  begins  at  the  top.  These  big 
business  men  were  once  little  business  men. 

To  cut  rates,  to  have  a  different  price  for 
each  customer,  to  substitute  one  article  for 
another,  are  the  prevailing  policies  of  the 
seller.  To  give  uncollectible  notes,  to 
claim  rebates,  to  make  assignments  and 
compromises,  to  use  one  shift  or  another  in 
order  to  get  possession  of  goods  and  pay  less 
than  the  contract  price,  are  the  prevailing 
aims  of  the  buyer. 

It  is  unquestionably  possible  for  an  incor- 
ruptible man  to  succeed  in  business.  But 
his  scruples  are  an  embarrassment.  Not 
everybody  wants  such  a  man.  He  insists 
on  reducing  every  reckoning  to  pounds  ster- 
ling, while  the  rest  of  the  world  is  figuring 
in  maravedis.  He  must  make  up  in  ability 
what  he  lacks  in  moral  obliquity. 

He  will  no  doubt  find  his  nook  in  time. 
Honesty  is  the  greatest  luxury  in  the  world, 
and  the  American  looks  with  awe  on  the 
man  who  can  afford  it,  or  insists  upon  hav- 
ing it.     It  is  right  that  he  should  pay  for  it. 

The  long  and  short  of  the  matter  is  that 
the  sudden  creation  of  wealth  in  the  United 
States  has  been  too  much  for  our  people. 
54 


SOCIETY 

We  are  personally  dishonest.  The  people 
of  the  United  States  are  notably  and  pecu- 
liarly dishonest  in  financial  matters. 

The  effect  of  this  on  government  is  but 
one  of  the  forms  in  which  the  ruling  passion 
is  manifest.  "  What  is  there  in  it  for  me  ?  " 
is  the  state  of  mind  in  which  our  people 
have  been  existing.  Out  of  this  come  the 
popular  philosophy,  the  social  life,  the  archi- 
tecture, the  letters,  the  temper  of  the  age; 
all  tinged  with  the  passion. 

Let  us  look  at  the  popular  philosophy  of 
the  day.  An  almost  ludicrous  disbelief  that 
any  one  can  be  really  disinterested  is  met  at 
once.  Any  one  who  takes  an  intelligent 
interest  in  public  affairs  becomes  a  "re- 
former." He  is  liked,  if  it  can  be  reason- 
ably inferred  that  he  is  advancing  his  own 
interests.  Otherwise  he  is  incomprehen- 
sible. He  is  respected,  because  it  is  impos- 
sible not  to  respect  him,  but  he  is  regarded 
as  a  mistaken  fellow,  a  man  who  interferes 
with  things  that  are  not  his  business,  a 
meddler. 

The  unspoken  religion  of  all  sensible  men 
inculcates  thrift  as  the  first  virtue.  Busi- 
ness thunders  at  the  young  man,  "Thou 
shalt  have  none  other  gods  but  me."  Nor 
55 


SOCIETY 

is  it  a  weak  threat,  for  business,  when  it 
speaks,  means  business.  The  young  doctor 
in  the  small  town  who  advocates  reform  loses 
practice  for  two  reasons:  first,  because  it  is 
imagined  that  he  is  not  a  serious  man,  not  a 
good  doctor,  if  he  gives  time  to  things  out- 
side his  profession;  second,  because  the  car- 
riage-maker does  not  agree  with  him  and 
regards  it  as  a  moral  duty  to  punish  him. 
The  newsdealer  in  the  Arcade  at  Rector 
Street  lost  custom  because  it  was  discovered 
that  he  was  a  Bryan  man.  The  bankers 
would  not  buy  papers  of  him.  Since  the 
days  of  David,  the  great  luxury  of  the  power- 
ful has  been  to  be  free  from  the  annoyance 
of  other  persons'  opinions.  The  professional 
classes  in  any  community  are  parasites  on 
the  moneyed  classes;  they  attend  the  distri- 
bution. They  cannot  strike  the  hand  that 
feeds  them.  In  a  country  where  economic 
laws  tend  to  throw  the  money  into  the  hands 
of  a  certain  type  of  men,  the  morality  of 
those  men  is  bound  to  affect  society  very 
seriously. 

The  world-famous  "timidity"  of  Ameri- 
cans in  matters  of  opinion,  is  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  a  mental  preoccupation. 
Tocqueville  thought  it  was  due  to  their 
democratic  form  of  government.  It  is  not 
56 


SOCIETY 

due  to  democracy,  but  to  commercial  condi- 
tions. In  Tocqueville's  day  it  arose  out  of 
the  slavery  question,  solely  because  that 
question  affected  trade. 

In  describing  the  social  life  of  Boston, 
Josiah  Quincy  says  of  George  Ticknor's 
hospitality:  "There  seemed  to  be  a  cosmo- 
politan spaciousness  about  his  very  vesti- 
bule. He  received  company  with  great  ease, 
and  a  simple  supper  was  always  served  to 
his  evening  visitors.  Prescott,  Everett, 
Webster,  Hi  Hard,  and  other  noted  Boston- 
ians  well  mixed  with  the  pick  of  such 
strangers  as  happened  to  be  in  the  city,  fur- 
nished a  social  entertainment  of  the  first 
quality.  Politics,  at  least  American  poli- 
tics, were  never  mentioned." 

It  was  at  such  "entertainments"  as  this 
that  the  foreign  publicists  received  their 
impressions  as  to  the  extinction  of  free 
speech  in  America.  Politics  could  not  be 
mentioned;  but  this  was  not  due  to  our 
democratic  form  of  government,  but  to  the 
fact  that  Beacon  Street  was  trading  with 
South  Carolina.  "  Politics  "  meant  slavery, 
and  Beacon  Street  could  not  afford  to  have 
values  disturbed  —  not  even  at  a  dinner 
party. 

We  have  seen  that  our  more  recent  rais- 
57 


SOCIETY 

government  has  not  been  due  to  democracy, 
and  we  now  see  that  the  most  striking  weak- 
ness of  our  social  life  is  not  and  never  has 
been  due  to  democracy. 

Let  us  take  an  example:  A  party  of  men 
meet  in  a  club,  and  the  subject  of  free  trade 
is  launched.  Each  of  these  men  has  been 
occupied  all  day  in  an  avocation  where 
silence  is  golden.  Shall  he  be  the  one  to 
speak  first  .^  Who  knows  but  what  some 
phase  of  the  discussion  may  touch  his 
pocket.'  But  the  matter  is  deeper.  Free 
speech  is  a  habit.  It  cannot  be  expected 
from  such  men,  because  a  particular  subject 
is  free  from  danger.  Let  the  subject  be 
dress  reform,  and  the  traders  will  be  equally 
politic. 

This  pressure  of  self-interest  which  pre- 
vents a  man  from  speaking  his  mind  comes 
on  top  of  that  familiar  moral  terrorism  of 
any  majority,  even  a  majority  of  two  persons 
against  one,  which  is  one  of  the  ultimate 
phenomena  of  human  intercourse. 

It  is  difificult  to  speak  out  a  sentiment 
that  your  table  companions  disapprove  of. 
Even  Don  Quixote  was  afraid  to  confess 
that  it  was  he  who  had  set  the  convicts  at 
liberty,  because  he  heard  the  barber  and 
curate  denounce  the  thing  as  an  outrage. 
58 


SOCIETY 

Now  the  weight  of  this  normal  social  pres- 
sure in  any  particular  case  will  depend  on 
how  closely  the  individuals  composing  the 
majority  resemble  each  other.  But  men, 
lighted  by  the  same  passion,  pursuing  one 
object  under  the  similar  conditions,  of  ne- 
cessity grow  alike.  By  a  process  of  natural 
selection,  the  self-seekers  of  Europe  have 
for  sixty  years  been  poured  into  the  hopper 
of  our  great  mill.  The  Suabian  and  the 
Pole  each  drops  his  costume,  his  language, 
and  his  traditions  as  he  goes  in.  They  come 
out  American  business  men ;  and  in  the  sec- 
ond generation  they  resemble  each  other 
more  closely  in  ideals,  in  aims,  and  in 
modes  of  thought  than  two  brothers  who  had 
been  bred  to  different  trades  in  Europe. 

The  uniformity  of  occupation,  the  uni- 
formity of  law,  the  absence  of  institutions, 
like  the  church,  the  army,  family  pride,  in 
fact,  the  uniformity  of  the  present  and  the 
sudden  evaporation  of  all  the  past,  have 
ground  the  men  to  a  standard. 

America  turns  out  only  one  kind  of  man. 
Listen  to  the  conversation  of  any  two  men 
in  a  street  car.  They  are  talking  about  the 
price  of  something  —  building  material,  ad- 
vertising, bonds,   cigars. 

We  have,  then,  two  distinct  kinds  of  pres- 
59 


SOCIETY 

sure,  each  at  its  maximum,  both  due  to 
commerce :  the  pressure  of  fear  that  any  un- 
popular sentiment  a  man  utters  will  show  in 
his  bank  account;  the  pressure  of  a  unified 
majority  who  are  alike  in  their  opinions, 
have  no  private  opinions,  nor  patience  with 
the  private  opinions  of  others.  Of  these 
two  pressures,  the  latter  is  by  far  the  more 
important. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  catchwords  of 
democracy  have  been  used  to  intensify  this 
tyranny.  If  the  individual  must  submit 
when  outvoted  in  politics,  he  ought  to  sub- 
mit when  outvoted  in  ethics,  in  opinion,  or 
in  sentiment.  Private  opinion  is  a  thing  to 
be  stamped  out,  like  private  law.  A  preju- 
dice is  aroused  by  the  very  fact  that  a  man 
thinks  for  himself;  he  is  dangerous;  he  is 
anarchistic. 

But  this  misapplication  of  a  dogma  is  not 
the  cause  but  the  cloak  of  oppression.  It  is 
like  the  theory  of  the  divine  right  of  Kings 
—  a  thing  invoked  by  conservatism  to  keep 
itself  in  control,  a  shibboleth  muttered  by 
men  whose  cause  will  not  bear  argument. 

We  must  never  expect  to  find  in  a  dogma 
the  explanation  of  the  system  which  it  props 
up.  That  explanation  must  be  sought  for 
60 


SOCIETY 

in  history.  The  dogma  records  but  does  not 
explain  a  supremacy.  Therefore,  when  we 
hear  some  one  appeal  to  democratic  principle 
for  a  justification  in  suppressing  the  individ- 
ual, we  have  to  reflect  how  firmly  must  this 
custom  be  established,  upon  what  a  strong 
basis  of  interest  must  it  rest,  that  it  has 
power  so  to  pervert  the  ideas  of  democracy. 
A  distrust  of  the  individual  running  into 
something  like  hatred  may  be  seen  reflected 
in  the  press  of  the  United  States.  The 
main  point  is  that  Americans  have  by 
business  training  been  growing  more  alike 
every  day,  and  have  seized  upon  any  and 
every  authority  to  aid  them  in  disciplining 
a  recusant. 

We  have  then  a  social  life  in  which  cau- 
tion and  formalism  prevail,  and  can  see  why 
it  is  that  the  gathering  at  the  club  was  a 
dull  affair. 

We  must  now  add  one  dreadful  fact :  Many 
of  these  men  at  the  club  are  dishonest.  The 
banker  has  come  from  a  Directors'  meeting 
of  a  large  corporation,  where  he  has  voted  to 
buy  ten  thousand  shares  of  railroad  stock 
which  he  and  his  associates  bought  on  fore- 
closure at  seventeen  three  weeks  before,  but 
which  now  stands  at  thirty,  because  the  quo- 
0? 


SOCIETY 

tations  have  been  rigged.  The  attorney  for 
the  corporation  is  here  talking  to  Professor 
Scuddamore  about  the  new  citizens'  move- 
ment, which  the  attorney  has  joined,  for  he 
is  a  great  reformer,  and  lives  in  horror  of 
the  wickedness  of  the  times.  Beyond  him 
sits  an  important  man,  whose  corporation 
has  just  given  a  large  sum  to  a  political 
organization.  Next  to  him  is  a  Judge,  who 
is  a  Republican,  but  fond  of  a  chat  with 
political  opponents.  With  them  is  the  edi- 
tor of  a  reform  paper,  whose  financial  arti- 
cles are  of  much  importance  to  the  town.  A 
very  eminent  lawyer  is  in  conversation  with 
him.  This  lawyer  has  just  received  a  large 
fee  from  the  city  for  work  which  would  not 
have  brought  him  more  than  one-fifth  of  the 
amount  if  done  for  a  private  client.  He  is, 
by  the  way,  a  law  partner  of  the  latest  trib- 
une of  the  people,  a  man  of  stainless  reputa- 
tion. Here  is  also  another  type  of  honor, 
the  middle-aged  practitioner  of  good  family, 
who  has  one  of  the  best  heads  in  town.  He 
knows  what  all  these  other  men  are,  and 
how  they  make  their  money;  yet  he  dines  at 
their  houses,  and  gets  business  from  them. 
On  his  left  is  a  man  much  talked  of  ten 
years  ago,  a  rare  man  to  be  seen  here.  He 
was  ambitious,  and  became  the  hope  of  re- 

62 


SOCIETY 

form.  But,  unfortunately,  he  also  had  a  tal- 
ent for  business.  He  became  rich  and  cyni- 
cal, and  you  see  that  he  is  looking  about,  as 
if  in  search  of  another  disappointed  man  to 
talk  to.  There  also  is  a  great  doctor,  visit- 
ing physician  of  three  hospitals,  one  of  which 
is  in  receipt  of  city  funds,  and  he  knows 
the  practice  of  packing  the  hospitals  before 
inspection  day  in  order  to  increase  the 
appropriation.  The  man  who  endowed  the 
hospital  sits  beyond.  All  these  wires  end 
in  this  club-room.  Now  start  your  topic  — 
jest  about  free  silver,  make  a  merry  sally  on 
Mayor  Jones.  Start  the  question:  "Why  is 
not  the  last  reform  commissioner  of  the  gas 
works  not  in  jail }  "  and  see  what  a  jovial 
crew  you  are  set  down  with. 

You  will  find  as  to  any  new  topic,  that 
each  one  requires  time  to  adjust  his  cravat 
to  it.  You  are  in  a  company  of  men  who 
are  so  anxious  to  be  reasonable,  to  be  "just," 
that  it  will  require  them  till  judgment  day 
to  make  up  their  minds  on  any  point.  Nor 
is  it  easy  to  say  how  any  one  of  them  ought 
to  behave.  Is  it  dishonest  to  draw  divi- 
dends from  a  corporation  which  you  believe 
to  be  corruptly  managed ;  to  wink  at  brib- 
ery done  in  the  interest  of  widows  and  of 
orphans.^  Must  you  cut  a  client  because  he 
63 


SOCIETY 

owns  a  judge  ?  What  proof  have  you  of  any 
of  these  things?  Do  you  demand  of  any 
one  of  these  men  that  he  shall  offend  or 
denounce  the  rest,  and,  short  of  that,  what 
course  should  he  take? 

The  point  here  made  is  not  an  ethical  one 
as  to  how  any  one  of  these  men  ought  to 
adjust  himself  to  the  corruption  about  him, 
but  the  sociological  point  —  that  a  civiliza- 
tion based  upon  a  commerce  which  is  in  all 
its  parts  corruptly  managed  will  present  a 
social  life  which  is  unintelligent  and  medi- 
ocre, made  up  of  people  afraid  of  each  other, 
whose  ideas  are  shopworn,  whose  manners 
are  self-conscious. 

The  ill-concealed  dependence  of  these  men 
on  each  other  is  not  resentful.  They  are  the 
most  good-natured  men  in  the  world.  But 
they  are  unenlightened.  Without  free  speech 
free  thought  can  hardly  exist.  Without  free 
speech  you  cannot  gather  the  fruits  of  the 
mind's  spontaneous  workings.  When  a  man 
talks  with  absolute  sincerity  and  freedom  he 
goes  on  a  voyage  of  discovery.  The  whole 
company  has  shares  in  the  enterprise.  He 
may  strike  out  some  idea  which  explains  the 
sphinx.  The  moral  consequences  of  circum- 
spect and  affable  reticence  are  even  worse 
than  the  intellectual  ones.  "  Live  and  let 
64 


SOCIETY 

live,"  says  our  genial  prudence.  Well 
enough,  but  mark  the  event.  No  one  ever 
lost  his  social  standing  merely  because  of 
his  offences,  but  because  of  the  talk  about 
them.  As  free  speech  goes  out  the  rascals 
come  in. 

Speech  is  a  great  part  of  social  life,  but 
not  the  whole  of  it.  Dress,  bearing,  ex- 
pression, betray  a  man,  customs  show  char- 
acter, all  these  various  utterances  mingle 
and  merge  into  the  general  tone  which  is 
the  voice  of  a  national  temperament;  pri- 
vate motive  is  lost  in  it. 

This  tone  penetrates  and  envelops  every- 
thing in  America.  It  is  impossible  to  con- 
demn it  altogether.  This  desire  to  please, 
which  has  so  much  of  the  shopman's  smile 
in  it,  graduates  at  one  end  of  the  scale  into 
a  general  kindliness,  into  public  benefac- 
tions, hospitals,  and  college  foundations;  at 
the  other  end  it  is  seen  melting  into  a  de- 
sire to  efface  one's  self  rather  than  give 
offence,  to  hide  rather  than  be  noticed. 

In  Europe,  the  men  in  the  pit  at  the  the- 
atre stand  up  between  the  acts,  face  the 
house,  and  examine  the  audience  at  leisure. 
The  American  dares  not  do  this.  He  can- 
not stand  the  isolation,  nor  the  publicity. 
The  American  in  a  horse  car  can  give  his 
5  6s 


SOCIETY 

seat  to  a  lady,  but  dares  not  raise  his  voice 
while  the  conductor  tramps  over  his  toes. 
It  violates  every  instinct  of  his  commercial 
body  to  thrust  his  private  concerns  into 
prominence.  The  American  addresses  his 
equal,  whom  he  knows  familiarly,  as  Mr. 
Jones,  giving  him  the  title  with  as  much 
subserviency  as  the  Englishman  pays  to  an 
unknown  Earl. 

Mere  financial  dishonesty  is  of  very  little 
importance  in  the  history  of  civilization. 
Who  cares  whether  Caesar  stole  or  Caesar 
Borgia  cheated?  Their  intellects  stayed 
clear.  The  real  evil  that  follows  in  the 
wake  of  a  commercial  dishonesty  so  general 
as  ours  is  the  intellectual  dishonesty  it  gen- 
erates. One  need  not  mind  stealing,  but 
one  must  cry  out  at  people  whose  minds  are 
so  befuddled  that  they  do  not  know  theft 
when  they  see  it.  Robert  Walpole  bought 
votes.  He  deceived  others,  but  he  did  not 
deceive  himself. 

We  have  seen  that  the  retailer  in  the 
small  town  could  not  afford  to  think  clearly 
upon  the  political  situation.  But  this  was 
a  mere  instance,  a  sample  of  his  mental  atti- 
tude. He  dare  not  face  any  question.  He 
must  shuffle,  qualify,  and  defer.  Here  at 
last  we  have  the  great  characteristic  which 
66 


SOCIETY 

covers  our  continent  like  a  climate  —  intel- 
lectual dishonesty.  This  state  of  mind  does 
not  merely  prevent  a  man  having  positive 
opinions.  The  American  is  incapable  of 
taking  a  real  interest  in  anything.  The 
lack  of  passion  in  the  American  —  notice- 
able in  his  books  and  in  himself  —  comes 
from  the  same  habitual  mental  distraction; 
for  passion  is  concentration.  Hence  also 
the  flippancy,  superficiality,  and  easy  humor 
for  which  we  are  noted.  Nothing  except 
the  dollar  is  believed  to  be  worthy  the  at- 
tention of  a  serious  man.  People  are  even 
ashamed  of  their  tastes.  Until  recently, 
we  thought  it  effeminate  for  a  man  to  play 
on  the  piano.  When  a  man  takes  a  living 
interest  in  anything,  we  call  him  a  "crank." 
There  is  an  element  of  self-sacrifice  in  any 
honest  intellectual  work  which  we  detect  at 
once  and  score  with  contumely. 

It  was  not  solely  commercial  interest  that 
made  the  biographers  of  Lincoln  so  thrifty 
to  extend  and  veneer  their  book.  It  was 
that  they  themselves  did  not,  could  not, 
take  an  interest  in  the  truth  about  him. 
The  second-rate  quality  of  all  our  letters 
and  verse  is  due  to  the  same  cause.  The 
intellectual  integrity  is  undermined.  The 
literary  man  is  concerned  for  what  "  will 
67  ' 


SOCIETY 

go,"  like  the  reformer  who  is  half  politician. 
The  attention  of  every  one  in  the  United 
States  is  on  some  one  else's  opinion,  not 
on  truth. 

The  matter  resolves  itself  at  last  into  Pilate's 
question :  What  is  truth  ?  We  do  not  know, 
and  shall  never  know.  But  it  seems  to  in- 
volve a  certain  focussing  and  concentration 
of  the  attention  that  brings  all  the  life 
within  us  into  harmony.  When  this  hap- 
pens to  us,  we  discover  that  truth  is  the 
only  thing  we  had  ever  really  cared  about  in 
the  world.  The  thing  seems  to  be  the  same 
thing,  no  matter  which  avenue  we  reach  it 
by.  At  whatever  point  we  are  touched,  we 
respond.  A  quartet,  a  cathedral,  a  sonnet, 
an  exhibition  of  juggling,  anything  well 
done  —  we  are  at  the  mercy  of  it.  But  as 
the  whole  of  us  responds  to  it,  so  it  takes  a 
whole  man  to  do  it.  Whatever  cracks  men 
up  and  obliterates  parts  of  them,  makes  them 
powerless  to  give  out  this  vibration.  This 
is  about  all  we  know  of  individualism  and 
the  integrity  of  the  individual.  The  sum  of 
all  the  philosophies  in  the  history  of  the 
world  can  be  packed  back  into  it.  All  the 
tyrannies  and  abuses  in  the  world  are  only 
bad  because  they  injure  this  integrity.  We 
desire  truth.  It  is  the  only  thing  we  desire. 
68 


SOCIETY 

To  have  it,  we  must  develop  the  individual. 
And  there  are  practical  ways  and  means  of 
doing  this.  We  see  that  all  our  abuses  are 
only  odious  because  they  injure  some  indi- 
vidual man's  spirit.  We  can  trace  the  cor- 
ruption of  politics  into  business,  and  find 
private  selfishness  at  the  bottom  of  it.  We 
can  see  this  spread  out  into  a  network  of 
invisible  influence,  in  the  form  of  intellect- 
ual dishonesty  blighting  the  minds  of  our 
people.  We  can  look  still  closer  and  see 
just  why  and  how  the  temperament  of  the 
private  man  is  expressed. 

We  study  this  first  in  social  life;  for 
social  life  is  the  source  and  fountain  of  all 
things.  The  touchstone  for  any  civilization 
is  what  one  man  says  to  another  man  in  the 
street.  Everything  else  that  happens  there 
bears  a  traceable  relation  to  the  tone  of  his 
voice.  The  press  reflects  it,  the  pulpit 
echoes  it,  the  literature  reproduces  it,  the 
architecture  embodies  it. 

The  rays  of  force  which  start  in  material 
prosperity  pass  through  the  focus  of  social 
life,  and  extend  out  into  literature,  art, 
architecture,  religion,  philosophy.  All  these 
things  are  but  the  sparks  thrown  off  the  ges- 
tures and  gaits,  the  records  of  the  social  life 
of  some  civilization.  That  is  the  reason 
69 


SOCIETY 

why  it  has  been  useful  to  pause  over  a 
club-house  and  study  its  inmates.  The 
ball-room,  the  dinner-table,  would  have  been 
equally  instructive.  The  deference  to  reign- 
ing convention  is  the  same  everywhere.  The 
instinct  of  self-concealment,  the  policy  of 
classing  like  with  like,  leads  to  the  herding 
of  the  young  with  the  young  only,  the  sport- 
ing with  the  sporting  only,  the  rich  with  the 
rich  only,  which  is  the  bane  of  our  society. 
The  suffocation  is  mitigated  here  and  there 
by  the  influence  of  ambitious  and  educated 
women.  They  are  doing  their  best  to  stem 
the  tide  which  they  can  neither  control  nor 
understand.  The  stratification  of  our  society, 
and  its  crystallization  into  social  groups,  is 
little  short  of  miraculous,  considering  the 
lightning  changes  of  scene.  The  nouveaiix 
riches  of  one  decade  are  the  old  noblesse  of 
the  next  decade,  and  yet  any  particular  set, 
at  any  particular  time,  has  its  exclusions, 
its  code  of  hats  and  coats  and  small  talk, 
which  are  more  rigid  than  those  of  London. 
The  only  place  in  the  country  where  soci- 
ety is  not  dull  is  Washington,  because  in 
Washington  politics  have  always  forced  the 
social  elements  to  mix;  because  in  Wash- 
ington, some  embers  of  the  old  ante-bellum 
society  survived;  because  the  place  has  no 
70 


SOCIETY 

commerce,  and  because  the  foreign  diplomats 
have  been  a  constant  factor,  educating  the 
Americans  in  social  matters.  But  Wash- 
ington is  not  the  centre  of  American  civil- 
ization. The  controlling  force  in  American 
life  is  not  in  its  politics,  but  in  commerce. 
New  York  is  the  head  and  heart  of  the 
United  States.  Chicago  is  America.  And 
the  elements  of  this  life  must  be  sought,  as 
always,  in  the  small  towns.  Find  the  social 
factors  which  are  common  to  New  York,  to 
Poughkeepsie,  and  to  Newport,  and  you  have 
the  keynote  to  the  country.  We  began  with 
a  city  club.  But  it  would  have  made  no 
difference  what  gathering  we  entered  —  a 
drawing-room  at  Newport,  a  labor  union  in 
Fifteenth  Street  —  we  should  have  found  the 
same  phenomena,  —  formalism,  suppression 
of  the  individual,  intellectual  dishonesty. 

The  dandy  at  Newport  who  conscientiously 
follows  his  leaders  and  observes  the  cab  rule, 
the  glove  ordinance,  and  the  mystery  of  the 
oyster  fork,  is  governed  by  the  same  law,  is 
fettered  by  the  same  force,  as  the  labor  man 
who  fears  to  tell  his  fellows  that  he  approves 
of  Waring' s  clean  streets.  Each  is  a  half- 
man,  each  is  afraid  of  his  fellows,  and  for 
the  same  reason.  Each  is  commercial,  keeps 
his  place  by  conciliatory  methods,  and  will 
71 


SOCIETY 

be  punished  for  contumacy  by  the  loss  of  his 
job.  Neither  of  them  has  an  independent 
opinion  upon  any  subject. 

The  charge  brought  against  our  million- 
aire society  is  that  it  is  vulgar.  The  houses 
are  palaces,  the  taste  is  for  the  most  part 
excellent,  the  people  are  in  every  sense  but 
the  commercial  sense  more  virtuous  than  the 
rich  of  any  other  nation.  Wealth  is  poured 
out  in  avalanches. 

Why  is  all  this  display  not  magnificent? 
The  millionaire  society  is  not  vulgar,  but  it 
is  insignificant.  The  reason  is,  that  you 
cannot  have  splendor  without  personal  and 
intellectual  independence,  and  this  does  not 
exist  in  America.  The  conversation  on  the 
Commodore's  steam  yacht  is  tedious.  The 
talk  at  the  weekly  meeting  of  the  amalga- 
mated glaziers  is  insipid,  and  impresses  you 
with  the  selfishness  of  mankind. 

Now  what  is  at  the  bottom  of  this  iden- 
tity.-* We  are  passing  through  the  great  age 
of  distribution.  It  is  not  confined  to  Amer- 
ica. It  qualifies  European  history.  All  the 
different  kinds  of  Socialism  are  mere  proofs 
of  it.  Every  one  either  wants  to  get  some- 
thing himself,  or,  if  he  is  a  philosopher, 
wants  to  show  other  people  how  to  get  it. 
Even  Henry  George  thought  that  man  lives 
72 


SOCIETY 

by  bread  alone ;  at  least,  he  thought  that  if 
you  only  give  every  one  lots  of  bread,  that  is 
all  you  need  provide  for;  the  rest  will  fol- 
low. In  America  we  are  leading  the  world 
in  the  intensity  with  which  this  phase  of 
progress  goes  on,  because  in  America  there 
is  nothing  else  to  occupy  men's  minds.  Let 
us  return  to  our  social  focus  and  its  relation 
to  the  arts. 

The  world  has  groped  for  three  thousand 
years  to  find  the  connection  between  moral- 
ity and  the  fine  arts.  It  may  be  that  we 
stand  here  on  the  borderland  of  discovery. 
We  can  at  least  see  that  they  are  not  likely 
to  arise  in  an  era  of  subserviency  and  intel- 
lectual fog. 

The  fine  arts  are  departments  of  science, 
and  the  attitude  of  mind  of  the  artist  toward 
his  work,  or  of  the  public  toward  his  product, 
is  that  of  an  interest  in  truth  for  its  own 
sake.  It  is  the  attitude  of  the  scientific  man 
toward  his  problems.  The  scientists  do  not 
waver  or  cringe.  They  are  the  great  bullies 
of  this  era.  They  draw  their  power  from 
their  work.  They  seek,  they  proclaim,  they 
monopolize  truth.  There  is  in  them  the 
note  of  greatness,  not  because  of  their  dis- 
coveries, but  because  of  their  pursuit. 

Commercial  or  sexual  crime  or  violence, 
73 


SOCIETY 

that  does  not  unman  the  artist,  ought  not 
to  extinguish  art,  and  it  never  has  done  so. 
Anything  that  has  made  him  time-serving 
or  truthless  ought  to  show  in  his  work,  and 
it  always  has  done  so. 

Any  system  of  morality  or  conjunction  of 
circumstances  that  tends  to  make  men  tell 
the  truth  as  they  see  it  will  tend  to  produce 
what  the  world  will  call  art.  If  the  state- 
ment be  accurate,  the  world  will  call  it 
beautiful.  Put  it  as  you  will,  art  is  self- 
assertion  and  beauty  is  accuracy.  Out  of 
the  fulness  of  the  heart  the  mouth  speaketh. 

Anybody  can  see  that  fiction  depends  upon 
social  conditions;  for  it  is  nothing  but  a 
description  of  them. 

Take  his  clubs  and  his  routs  away  from 
Thackeray,  his  hunting  away  from  White- 
Melville,  his  peasantry  away  from  Scott,  his 
street  life  away  from  Dickens,  and  where 
would  their  books  be.''  Vigorous  and  pic- 
turesque individuality  must  precede  good 
fiction.  The  great  American  novel,  except 
as  the  outcome  of  a  vigorous  social  life,  is 
the  dream  of  an  idiot.  You  must  have  an 
age  of  ebullition,  where  the  spontaneous  life 
about  the  novelist  forces  itself  into  his 
books,  before  you  can  have  good  fiction. 
Architecture  depends  so  plainly  upon  social 
74 


SOCIETY 

life,  that  we  have  only  to  look  at  our  country 
houses  from  Colonial  times  down,  to  read  the 
hearts  of  the  inmates.  And  so  with  the 
other  fine  arts  and  decorations,  they  are 
mere   languages. 

It  is  thought  that  our  modern  life  is  more 
complex  than  that  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
because  the  machinery  by  which  it  is  car- 
ried on  is  expanded.  Transportation,  news- 
papers, corporations,  oceans  of  books  and 
magazines,  foreign  cables,  have  changed  the 
forms  by  which  power  is  transmitted.  But 
the  manifestations  of  humanity  in  govern- 
ment, in  social  life,  and  in  the  arts  proceed 
upon  the  same  principles  as  ever.  Every- 
thing depends  as  completely  on  personal  in- 
tercourse as  it  did  in  Athens.  The  real 
struggle  comes  between  two  men  across  a 
table,  my  force  against  your  force.  The 
devices  which  political  philosophy  has  al- 
ways approved,  are  those  which  protect  the 
spirit  of  the  individual,  and  enable  it  to  grow 
strong.  The  struggles  for  English  liberty 
have  been  struggles  over  taxation.  The 
rights  of  the  sovereign  to  seize  a  man's 
property,  or  imprison  his  body  without  form 
of  law,  were  abolished.  This  comparative 
financial  independence  of  the  English  sub- 
ject has  been  valued  as  the  basis  of  spiritual 
75 


SOCIETY 

independence.  It  has  no  other  claim  to  be 
thought  important.  Yet  while  we  have  been 
praising  our  bills  of  rights  and  bulwarks  of 
liberty,  commerce  in  the  United  States  has 
been  bringing  power  after  power,  battalion 
after  battalion,  to  bear  upon  the  integrity  of 
spirit  of  the  individual  man.  Here  is  a 
situation  which  no  legislation  can  meet. 
Civil  liberty  has  been  submerged  in  the 
boss  system.  But  this  is  a  mere  symptom. 
It  is  valuable  only  because  it  brings  strik- 
ingly into  view  the  intellectual  bondage  it 
denotes.  It  is  valuable  only  because  it  gives 
us  a  fighting  ground,  an  educational  arena  in 
which  the  fight  for  intellectual  liberty  may 
be  begun. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  go  over  the  steps  of 
the  argument  backward,  and  to  show  how 
our  citizen  movements  are  a  mere  sign  that 
the  individual  is  becoming  more  unselfish. 
How,  partly  through  the  settling  of  commerce 
into  more  stable  conditions,  partly  through 
revulsion  in  the  heart  of  man  against  so 
much  wickedness,  a  reign  of  better  things  is 
coming.  The  Christian  Endeavorers,  the 
University  Settlements,  the  innumerable 
leagues  and  propaganda  which  bring  no  dog- 
mas, but  which  stand  for  faith  —  speak  for 
multitudes,  affect  every  one.  Their  influ- 
76 


SOCIETY 

ence  can  already  be  traced  into  business, 
into  social  life,  and  out  again  into  every 
department  of  our  existence.  The  revolu- 
tion is  going  forward  on  a  great  scale,  and 
the  demonstration  is  about  to  be  worked  out 
throughout  the  continent  as  if  it  were  a 
blackboard. 

The  man  who  has  subscribed  $i,ooo  to 
the  reform  campaign,  the  man  who  has 
worked  for  the  cause,  and  the  man  who  has 
voted  the  ticket,  have  met.  This  personal 
meeting,  this  social  focus,  exists  and  is  in- 
destructible. These  people  who  have  been 
kept  apart  by  the  old  political  conditions,  by 
the  boss  system,  and  the  capitalist;  these 
men  whom  every  element  of  selfishness  and 
corruption  fought  with  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  to  keep  separate,  have  come 
together.  The  downfall  of  the  old  social 
system,  and  the  redistribution  of  every  force 
in  the  community,  is  inevitable.  In  the  first 
place,  every  individual  in  the  community  has 
talked  about  the  movement  with  an  intensity 
proportionate  to  his  power  of  good.  Our 
form  of  government  throws  the  moral  idea 
with  terrible  force,  as  a  practical  issue,  into 
the  life  of  each  man.  "Thou  art  the  man." 
The  extreme  simplicity  of  our  social  fabric 
77 


SOCIETY 

makes  it  impossible  for  any  one  to  get  be- 
hind his  institution,  his  class,  his  prejudice. 
There  is  no  one  who  cannot  be  shown  up. 
We  are  as  defenceless  before  virtue  as  we 
were  before  selfishness.  Our  politics  can  be 
worked  as  effectively  by  one  passion  as  by 
the  other  —  but  we  are  only  just  beginning 
to  find  this  out. 

Free  speech  and  the  grouping,  classing, 
and  mingling  of  men  according  to  intellect, 
and  not  according  to  income,  have  begun 
already.  They  are  not  more  the  outcome 
than  they  are  the  cause  of  these  citizens' 
movements.  They  are  the  same  elemental 
thing.  The  love  of  truth  is  the  same  pas- 
sion as  the  veneration  for  the  individual.  It 
is  impossible  to  really  want  reform  and  to 
remain  socially  exclusive  or  socially  defer- 
ential. And  so,  a  social  life  is  beginning  to 
emerge  in  New  York,  based  on  the  noblest 
and  the  most  natural  passion  that  can  stir  in 
the  heart  of  man  The  results  in  the  field 
of  practical  politics,  will  be  that  "society" 
—  at  least  such  of  our  drawing-rooms  and 
dinner  tables  as  any  one,  whether  foreigner 
or  native,  knows  or  cares  anything  about  — 
will  resume  the  political  importance  which 
such  places  have  always  held  in  civilized 
times,  and  of  which  nothing  but  extraordi- 
78 


SOCIETY 

nary  and  transient  conditions  have  deprived 
them.  Let  any  one  who  doubts  this,  com- 
pare the  club  talk  and  dinner  table  talk  of 
to-day,  with  the  talk  of  ten  years  ago.  It 
would  be  childish  to  guess  the  positive  re- 
sults on  the  arts,  theatres,  novels,  verse 
which  will  follow  ;  but  you  can  no  more  keep 
the  spirit  of  freedom  out  of  these  things  than 
you  can  keep  it  out  of  personal  manners. 
These  are  changing  daily.  The  decorums 
and  codes  of  behavior,  the  old  self-conscious 
ness  and  self-distrust  are  dropping  off.  Stead- 
ily the  flood  of  life  advances,  inspiring  all 
things. 


79 


EDUCATION:  FROEBEL 


Ill 

EDUCATION:  FROEBEL 

I  HAVE  two  boys,  aged  seven  and  four. 
They  required  a  governess  and  I  got  one. 
After  a  couple  of  months  during  which  the 
usual  experiences  in  the  training  of  young 
children  were  gone  through,  I  discovered  that 
it  was  I  who  was  being  educated.  My  mind 
was  being  swayed  and  drawn  to  a  point  of 
view.  I  was  in  contact  with  a  method  so 
profound  that  it  seemed  as  if  I  were  dealing 
with,  or  rather  being  dealt  with  by  the  forces 
of  nature.  I  was  in  the  presence  of  great 
genius.  What  was  it.-*  The  text  book  on 
Froebel  by  Hughes  in  the  International 
Series  on  Education  made  the  matter  clear. 
Froebel  was  an  experimental  psychologist 
who  used  the  terms  of  the  German  philoso- 
phy of  his  day.  But  the  facts  of  life,  the 
thing  he  was  studying,  was  never  for  a 
moment  absent  from  his  mind.  He  lived 
in  an  age  when  the  ideas  of  evolution  were 
in  the  air,  and  before  they  had  received 
83 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

their  conclusive  proof  by  being  applied  to 
morphology. 

This  application  has  for  a  time  killed  phi- 
losophy, for  it  has  identified  the  new  ideas 
with  the  physical  sciences,  and  led  men  to 
study  the  human  mind  in  psychology  and 
from  without.  Whereas  the  mind  and  its 
laws  can,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be  studied 
only  through  introspection.  Froebel  had  a 
scientific  intellect  of  the  very  first  calibre ; 
he  had  the  conception  of  flux,  of  change,  of 
evolution  to  start  with  ;  and  he  took  up  intro- 
spectively  the  study  of  the  laws  of  the  human 
mind,  choosing  that  province  of  the  universe 
where  they  are  most  visibly  and  typically 
exposed, —  the  mind  of  the  growing  child. 

The  "laws"  which  he  states  are  little 
more  than  a  description  of  the  phenomena 
that  he  observed.  They  are  statements  of 
the  results  of  his  experiments,  and  the  lan- 
guage he  employs  can  be  translated  to  suit 
the  education  of  almost  any  one.  His  atten- 
tion was  so  concentrated  upon  fact  that  his 
terminology  does  not  mislead.  It  can  be 
translated  into  the  language  of  metaphysics, 
of  Christian  theology,  or  of  modern  science, 
and  it  remains  incorruptibly  coherent. 

His  method  of  study  was  the  only  method 
which  can  obtain  results  in  philosophy, 
84 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

self-study  unconsciously  carried  on.  He 
observed  the  child,  and  guessed  at  what  was 
going  on  in  its  mind  by  a  comparison  with 
what  he  knew  of  himself.  He  was  anxious 
to  train  young  children  intelligently,  and  he 
found  it  necessary  to  describe  and  formulate 
his  knowledge  of  the  operation  of  their 
minds.  It  turns  out  that  he  made  a  state- 
ment of  the  universe  more  comprehensive,  a 
philosophy  more  universal,  than  any  other  of 
which  we  have  any  record. 

But  this  is  not  the  most  important  thing 
he  did.  He  devised  a  method  based  upon 
his  experiments  and  set  agoing  the  kinder- 
garten upon  its  course  in  conquest  of  the 
world.  If  it  had  not  been  for  this,  he  might 
never  have  been  heard  of,  for  the  world  has 
small  use  for  systems  of  philosophy,  however 
profound,  expressed  in  terms  which  have  been 
superseded  and  are  become  inexpressive. 
But  Froebel  started  a  practice.  He  showed 
the  way.  He  put  in  the  hands  of  persons  to 
whom  his  philosophy  must  ever  remain  a 
mystery,  the  means  of  working  out  those 
practical  ends  for  which  that  philosophy  was 
designed. 

The  greatness  of  Froebel  lies  in  this,  that 
he  saw  the  essential.     What  sort  of  an  ani- 
mal is  man,  asks  the  morphologist,  for  he  is 
8S 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

beginning  to  reach  this  point  in  his  studies, 
and  before  he  has  asked  it,  Froebel  has  an- 
swered him. 

'  Out  of  the  mouth  of  babes  and  sucklings 
hast  thou  ordained  strength. ' 

It  may  be  said  at  once  that  the  substance 
of  everything  Froebel  says  was  known  be- 
fore. Solomon  and  Orpheus,  Marcus  Aure- 
lius,  Emerson,  and  all  of  us  have  known  it. 
Otherwise  Froebel  would  be  unimportant. 
It  is  his  correlation  and  his  formulation  of 
the  main  facts  about  human  life  that  make 
him  important.  It  is  as  a  summary  of  wis- 
dom, as  a  focus  of  idea,  as  a  lens  through 
which  the  rest  of  the  ideas  in  the  world  can 
be  viewed,  that  he  is  great. 

The  laws  he  discovered  may  be  stated  in 
a  paragraph.  The  child  is  a  growing  organ- 
ism. It  is  a  unity.  It  develops  through 
creative  activity.  It  is  benefited  by  contact 
with  other  children  and  is  happy  in  propor- 
tion as  it  is  unselfishly  employed. 

Let  us  assume  for  a  moment  that  these 
things  are  true,  that  they  are  the  most  im- 
portant truths  about  the  child  ;  and  let  us  see 
how  they  must  affect  our  views  of  life,  of 
politics,  sociology,  art,  religion,  conduct. 
There  is  of  course  no  moment  at  which  the 
86 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

child  ceases  to  be  a  child.  The  laws  of  its 
growth  and  being  are  not  at  any  discover- 
able time  superseded  by  any  new  laws.  Man 
as  a  creature,  as  an  organism,  has  here  by 
Froebel,  and  for  the  first  time  in  history, 
been  ingenuously  studied,  and  the  main  laws 
of  him  noted.  With  the  discovery  that  he 
is  a  unity,  there  vanishes  every  classification 
of  science  made  since  the  days  of  Aristotle. 
They  are  convenient  dogmas,  thumb  rule 
distinctions,  useful  as  aids  in  the  further 
pushing  of  our  studies  into  the  workings  of 
this  unity.  Take  up  now  a  book  of  political 
economy,  a  poem,  a  history:  this  thought  of 
Fro^bel's  runs  through  it  like  quicksilver. 
The  scheme  of  thought  of  the  writer  is  by 
it  dissolved  at  once  into  human  elements. 
You  find  you  are  studying  the  operation  of 
the  mind  of  some  one,  whom  you  picture  to 
yourself  as  a  man,  as  a  unit ;  you  are  inter- 
preting this  by  your  own  experience.  It  is 
all  psychology,  you  are  pushing  your  analy- 
sis. The  universe  is  receiving  its  interpre- 
tation through  you  yourself.  We  are  thus 
brought  to  the  point  of  view  of  the  mystic, 
as  the  only  conceivable  point  of  view. 

"That  the  organism  develops  by  creative 
activity."     This  might  have  come  as  a  de- 
duction from  Darwin.     It  is  an  expression 
87 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

in  metaphysical  language  of  the  "struggle 
for  life."  Froebel  discovered  it  indepen- 
dently. The  consequences  of  a  belief  in  it 
are  so  tremendous,  that  no  man  who  is  not 
prepared  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  life  com- 
pletely dominated  by  the  idea,  ought  even 
to  pause  to  consider  it. 

Your  capacities,  your  beliefs,  your  devel- 
opment, your  spiritual  existence  are  the 
result  of  what  you  do.  Active  creation  of 
some  sort,  occupation  which  takes  your  en- 
tire attention  and  calls  upon  you,  merely 
incidentally  and  as  a  matter  of  course,  for 
thought,  resource,  individual  or  original  force; 
this  will  develop  you  and  nothing  else  will. 

The  connection  between  this  thought  and 
the  previous  one  is  apparent.  It  is  only  by 
such  creative  activity  that  the  organism  as  a 
unit  gets  into  play.  If  you  set  a  man  copy- 
ing or  memorizing,  you  have  occupied  only 
a  fraction  of  him.  If  you  set  him  to  mak- 
ing something,  the  minute  he  begins,  his 
attention  is  concentrated.  Willy  nilly  he 
is  trying  to  make  something  significant,  he 
is  endeavoring  to  express  himself,  the  forces 
and  powers  within  him  begin  coming  to  his 
succor,  offering  aid  and  suggestion.  Before 
he  knows  it,  his  whole  being  is  in  opera- 
tion. The  result  is  a  statement  of  some 
88 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

sort,  and  in  the  process  of  making  it  the 
creature  has  developed.  But  when  you 
say  "significant  "  you  have  already  implied 
the  existence  of  other  organisms.  He  is 
not  expressing  himself  only,  he  is  express- 
ing them  all,  and  here  comes  Froebel  with 
his  third  great  discovery,  that  it  is  by  con- 
stant personal  intercourse  with  others  that 
the  power  to  express  is  gained.  And  on  top 
of  this  comes  the  last  law,  so  closely  related 
to  the  third  as  to  be  merely  a  new  view  of 
it,  but  discovered  by  experiment,  tested  by 
practice,  announced  empirically  and  as  a 
fact,  that  the  child  is  unselfish  and  only 
really  happy  when  at  work  creatively  and  for 
the  use  and  behoof  of  others. 

This  conclusion  throws  back  its  rays  over 
the  course  of  the  argument,  and  we  are  com- 
pelled to  see,  what  we  have  already  known, 
that  unselfishness  and  intellectual  develop- 
ment are  one  and  the  same  thing,  that  there 
is  no  failure  of  intellect  which  cannot  be 
expressed  in  terms  of  selfishness,  and  no 
selfishness  that  cannot  be  expressed  as  in- 
tellectual shortcoming.  Criminology  has 
reached  the  same  point  by  another  route. 

The  matter  is  really  very  simple,  for  any- 
thing self-regardant  means  a  return  of  the 
organism   upon  itself,   a  stepping   on  your 
89 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

own  toes,  and  brings  self-consciousness,  dis- 
comfort, pain.  Self-sacrifice  on  the  other 
hand  brings  fulfilment.  The  self-sacrifice 
is  always  illusory,  and  the  development  real. 
This  becomes  frightfully  apparent  in  ingen- 
uous and  unhappy  love  affairs,  for  the  organ- 
ism robbed  of  fulfilment  returns  upon  itself. 

It  makes  little  difference  what  province  of 
thought  we  begin  with  in  applying  these 
views  to  the  world.  They  give  results  like 
a  table  of  logarithms.  They  do  more  than 
this,  they  unravel  the  most  complex  situa- 
tions, they  give  the  key  to  conduct  and  put 
a  compass  in  the  hands  of  progress.  They 
explain  history,  they  support  religion,  they 
justify  instinct,  they  interpret  character. 
They  give  the  formula  for  doing  consciously 
what  mankind  has  been  doing  unconsciously 
in  so  far  as  it  has  been  doing  what  any  one 
of  us  in  his  soul  approves  of  or  cares  to 
imitate. 

Let  us  take  up  the  most  obvious  deduc- 
tions. If  people  develop  according  to  their 
activities,  their  opinions  will  be  a  mere 
reflex  of  their  conduct.  What  they  see  in 
the  world  comes  out  of  what  they  do  in  the 
world.  Here  in  a  mere  niche  of  Froebel 
we  find  the  whole  of  Emerson. 

The    power   and    permanence   of    Sainte 
90 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

Beuve  are  due  to  his  having  applied  this 
theory  to  the  interpretation  of  literature. 
He  is  not  content  till  he  has  seen  the  rela- 
tion between  the  conduct  and  the  opinions, 
the  conduct  and  the  art  of  a  character. 

Or  take  Emerson  himself,  why  was  it  that 
being  so  much  he  was  not  more  ?  How  came 
it  that  after  his  magnificent  prologue  in  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  address,  which  is  like  the 
opening  of  a  symphony,  he  relapsed  into 
iteration  and  brilliant  but  momentary  vis- 
ions of  his  own  horizon?  He  kept  repeat- 
ing his  theme  till  he  piped  himself  into 
fragmentary  inconsequence.  The  reason  is 
that  he  had  learned  all  he  knew  before  he 
retired  to  Concord  and  contemplation.  Ac- 
tive life  would  have  made  him  blossom  an- 
nually and  last  like  Gladstone. 

Or  take  Goethe :  all  that  is  questionable 
in  him  results  from  his  violation  of  two  of 
Froebel's  laws  of  psychology.  He  fixed  his 
attention  upon  self-development  and  thereby 
gradually  ossified.  Every  moment  of  ego- 
tism was  an  intellectual  loss.  His  contact 
with  people,  meanwhile,  became  more  and 
more  formal  as  he  grew  older,  and  his  work 
more  and  more  inexpressive. 

Give  me  a  man's  beliefs,  and  I  will  give 
you  his  occupation.  What  has  happened  to 
91 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

that  radical  that  he  seems  to  have  become  so 
moderate  and  reasonable  ?  You  find  that  for 
six  months  he  has  been  clerk  to  the  Civil 
Service  Reform  Club.  Why  is  the  mystical 
poetry  of  this  intellectual  man  as  vacant  as 
the  fashion  print  he  edits  for  his  daily  bread  ? 
His  employment  has  tracked  his  mind  to 
these  unearthly  regions.  He  is  dead  here 
too. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  independent 
belief,  based  on  evidence  and  reflection. 
The  thing  we  call  belief  is  a  mere  record 
left  by  conduct.  If  you  sincerely  go  through 
the  regimen  of  Loyola's  manual,  you  will 
come  out  a  Jesuit.  You  can  no  more  resist 
it  than  you  can  resist  the  operation  of  ether. 
This  man  is  an  optimist.  It  means  that  he 
has  struggled.  That  man  is  a  pessimist.  It 
means  that  he  has  shirked.  Here  is  one 
who  has  been  in  touch  with  all  movements 
for  good  during  a  dismal  era  of  corruption, 
and  yet  he  has  no  faith.  It  means  that  the 
whole  of  him  has  not  been  enlisted.  His 
conscience  has  drawn  him  forward.  It  is 
not  enough.  There  is  compromise  in  him. 
He  is  not  an  absolute  fighter. 

Here  is  the  most  excellent  gentleman  in 
America,  an  old  idealist  untouchably  tran- 
scendental, an  educated  man.  To  your 
92 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

amazement  he  thinks  that  it  is  occasionally 
necessary  to  subsidize  the  powers  of  evil. 
He  was  bred  a  banker. 

Here  is  a  village  schoolma'am  who  from 
a  rag  of  information  in  a  county  paper  has 
divined  the  true  inwardness  of  a  complicated 
controversy  at  Washington  which  you  hap- 
pen to  know  all  about.  She  has  been  re- 
forming a  poorhouse. 

A  is  a  clergyman,  good  but  ineffective. 
He  relies  on  beneficence  and  persuasion. 
He  does  not  know  the  world  better  than  a 
club  loafer  knows  it.  The  only  entry  to  it 
is  by  attack,  the  only  progress  by  action. 

B  is  a  good  fellow,  yet  betrays  a  momen- 
tary want  of  delicacy  which  gives  you  a 
shock,  and  which  you  forgive  him,  saying: 
"It  is  a  coarseness  of  natural  fibre."  It  is 
no  such  thing.  There  is  in  every  man  a 
natural  fibre  as  fine  as  a  poet's.  His  coarse- 
ness  is  the  residuum  of  an  act. 

You  meet  a  man  whom  you  have  known 
as  a  court  stenographer,  and  whom  you  have 
supposed  to  be  drowned  in  worldly  cares. 
At  a  chop  house  he  gives  you  a  discourse  on 
Plato's  Phsedrus  which  he  interprets  in  a 
novel  way.  The  brains  of  the  man  surprise 
you.  This  man,  though  he  looks  sordid, 
positively  must  have  been  sending  a  younger 
93 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

brother  to  college  during  many  years.  There 
is  no  other  explanation  of  him. 

The  nemesis  of  conduct  then  stalks  about 
in  the  form  of  a  natural  law,  not  as  the  pseudo 
science  of  fancy,  but  as  a  mode  of  growth, 
modestly  formulated  by  a  great  naturalist. 

Take  the  matter  up  on  its  other  side. 
You  can  only  discover  in  the  universe,  try 
how  you  will,  strain  your  eyes  how  you 
please,  you  can  only  see  what  you  have 
lived.  Out  of  our  activity  comes  our  char- 
acter, and  it  is  with  this  that  we  see  beauty 
or  ugliness,  hope  or  despair.  It  is  by  this 
that  we  gauge  the  operation  of  economic  law 
and  of  all  other  spiritual  forces.  It  is  with 
this  that  we  interpret  all  things.  What  we 
see  is  only  our  own  lives. 

We  are  all  more  or  less  in  contact  with 
human  life.  We  live  in  a  pandemonium,  a 
paradise  of  illustrations,  and  if  we  have  only 
eyes  to  see,  there  is  enough  in  any  tenement 
house  to-day  to  lay  bare  the  heart  and  pro- 
gress of  Greek  art. 

But  the  worst  is  to  come  —  the  horror  that 
makes  intellect  a  plaything.  By  a  double 
consequence  the  past  fetters  the  future. 
Once  take  any  course  and  our  eyes  begin 
to  see  it  as  right,  our  hearts  to  justify  it. 
Only  fighting  can  save  us,  and  we  see  noth- 
94 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

ing  to  fight  for.  Thraldom  enters  and  night 
like  death  where  no  voice  reaches.  The 
eternal  struggle  is  for  vision. 

How  idiotic  are  the  compliments  or  the 
contempt  of  the  inexperienced.  Nothing  but 
life  teaches.  Hallam  thinks  Juliet  immod- 
est, and  he  had  read  all  the  literatures  of 
Europe.  If  you  want  to  understand  the  Greek 
civilization  you  have  got  to  be  Sophocles. 
If  you  want  to  understand  the  New  Testa- 
ment you  have  got  to  be  Christ.  If  you  want 
to  understand  that  most  complex  and  difficult 
of  all  things,  the  present,  you  must  be  some 
or  all  of  it,  some  of  it  any  way.  You  must 
have  it  ground  into  you  by  a  contact  so 
wrenchingly  close,  by  a  struggle  so  severe, 
that  you  lose  consciousness,  and  afterwards 
—  next  year  —  you  will  understand. 

Here  is  the  reaction  familiar  to  all  men 
since  the  dawn  of  history,  which  makes  the 
man  of  action  the  hero  of  all  times.  It  goes 
in  courage,  it  comes  out  power. 

This  reaction,  this  transformation  goes 
forward  in  the  very  stuff  that  we  are  made 
of,  and  if  we  come  to  look  at  it  closely,  we 
are  obliged  to  speak  of  it  in  terms  of  con- 
sciousness. There  are  so  many  different 
kinds  of  consciousness,  that  the  best  we  can 
do  is  to  remind  some  one  else  of  the  kind 
95 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

we  mean.  The  hand  of  the  violinist  is  un- 
conscious to  the  extent  that  it  is  functioning 
properly,  and  as  his  command  over  music 
develops,  this  unconsciousness  creeps  up  his 
arm  and  possesses  his  brain  and  being,  until 
he,  as  he  plays,  is  completely  unself-con- 
scious  and  his  music  is  the  mere  projection 
of  an  organism  which  is  functioning  freely. 

But  this  condition  of  complete  concentra- 
tion makes  us  in  a  different  sense  of  the 
word  self-conscious  in  the  highest  degree, 
self-comprehending,  self-controlled,  self-ex- 
pressing. And  it  is  in  this  philosophical 
sense  that  the  word  self-conscious  is  used  by 
the  Germans,  and  may  sometimes  be  conven- 
iently used  by  us,  if  we  can  do  so  without 
foregoing  the  right  to  use  the  words  con- 
scious and  unconscious  in  their  popular  sense 
at  other  times. 

The  discovery  of  Froebel  was  that  this 
mastery  over  our  own  powers  was  to  be  ob- 
tained only  through  creative  activity.  The 
suggestion,  it  may  be  noted,  is  destined  to 
reorganize  every  school  of  violin  playing  in 
Europe.  For  we  have  here  the  major  canon 
of  a  rational  criticism.  We  find  that  in 
the  old  vocabulary  such  words  as  genius, 
temperament,  style,  originality,  etc.,  have 
always  been  fumblingly  used  to  denote  dif- 
96 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

ferent  degrees  in  which  some  man's  brain 
was  working  freely  and  with  full  self-con- 
sciousness. A  deliverance  of  this  kind  has 
always  been  designated  as  *  creative, '  no 
matter  in  what  field  it  was  found. 

Approaching  the  matter  more  closely,  we 
see  that  the  whole  of  the  man  must  have 
responded  in  real  life  to  every  particle  of 
experience  which  he  uses  in  his  work.  An 
imitation  means  something  which  does  not 
represent  an  original  unitary  vibration. 

Goethe  puts  in  the  mouth  of  the  mad 
Gretchen  a  snatch  of  German  song  in  imita- 
tion of  Ophelia.  The  treatment  does  not 
fit  the  character.  It  has  only  been  through 
that  part  of  Goethe's  mind  with  which  he 
read  Shakespeare.  As  a  sequel  to  this  sugges- 
tion, the  peasant  of  the  early  scenes  has  lav- 
ished upon  her  all  the  various  reminiscences 
of  the  pathetic  that  Goethe  could  muster. 
It  is  moving,  but  it  is  inorganic.  It  is 
not  true. 

For  note  this,  that  while  it  takes  the 
whole  of  a  man  to  do  anything  true,  no  mat- 
ter how  small,  anything  that  the  whole  of 
him  does  is  right.  Hence  the  inimitable 
grotesques  of  greatness,  the  puns  in  tragedy. 
These  things  belong  to  the  very  arcana  of 
nature.  By  and  by,  when  the  reasons  are 
7  97 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

understood,  nature  will  be  respected.  No 
one  will  attempt  to  imitate  genius,  or  to 
reproduce  an  artistic  effect  of  any  kind. 

If  we  look  at  recent  literature  by  the  light 
of  this  canon,  we  find  the  reason  for  its  in- 
feriority. It  is  the  work  of  half  minds,  of 
men  upon  whose  intelligence  the  weight  of 
a  dogma  is  pressing. 

The  eclipse  of  philosophy  was  of  course 
reflected  in  fiction.  There  is  the  same 
trouble  with  Herbert  Spencer  as  with  Zola, 
Each  of  them  thinks  to  wrest  the  secrets  of 
sociology  from  external  observation.  Their 
books  lack  objectivity  and  are  ephemeral. 
Kant  and  Balzac  did  better  because  their 
method  was  truer. 

Everything  good  that  has  been  done  in 
the  last  fifty  years  has  been  done  in  the 
teeth  of  current  science.  The  whole  raft  of 
English  scientists  are  children  playing  with 
Raphael's  brushes  the  moment  they  leave 
some  specialty.  There  never  lived  a  set  of 
men  more  blinded  by  dogma,  blinded  to 
the  meaning  of  the  past,  to  the  trend  of  the 
future,  by  the  belief  that  they  had  found  new 
truth.  Not  one  of  them  can  lift  the  stone 
and  show  what  lies  under  Darwin's  demon- 
stration. They  run  about  with  little  pam- 
phlets and  proclaim  a  New  Universe  like 
98 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

Frenchmen.  They  bundle  up  all  beliefs 
into  a  great  Dogma  of  Unbelief,  and  throw 
away  the  kernel  of  life  with  the  shell.  This 
was  inevitable.  A  generation  or  two  was 
well  sacrificed,  in  this  last  fusillade  of  the 
Dogma  of  Science  —  the  old  guard  dogma 
that  dies  but  never  surrenders.  Hereafter 
it  will  be  plain  that  the  whole  matter  is  a 
matter  of  symbols  on  the  one  hand,  knowl 
edge  of  human  nature  on  the  other. 

Herbert  Spencer  has  been  a  useful  church- 
warden to  science,  but  his  knowledge  of  life 
was  so  trifling,  his  own  personal  development 
so  one-sided,  that  his  sociology  is  a  farce. 

This  canon  of  criticism  explains  in  a  very 
simple  manner  the  art  ages,  times  when 
apparently  every  one  could  paint,  or  speak, 
or  compose.  The  art  which  is  lost  is  really 
the  art  of  courageous  action.  Neither  war 
nor  dogma  nor  revolution  is  necessary,  for 
feeling  can  no  more  be  lost  than  force,  and 
the  power  to  express  it  depends  upon  an  in- 
terest in  life.  The  past  has  enriched  us 
with  conventions,  and  whenever  a  man  or  a 
group  of  men  arises  who  uses  them  and  is 
not  subdued  to  them,  we  have  art.  The 
thing  is  easy.  To  the  doers  it  is  a  mere 
knack  of  the  attention. 

We  had  almost  thought  that  art  was  fin- 
99 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

ished,  and  we  find  we  are  standing  at  the 
beginning  of  all  things.  Froebel  has  found 
a  formula  which  fits  every  human  activity. 

Let  us  take  the  supreme  case,  the  apogee 
of  human  development,  and  what  will  it  be .-' 

The  sum  of  all  possible  human  knowledge 
is,  as  we  have  seen,  an  expansion  of  our 
understanding  of  human  nature,  and  this  is 
got  by  intercourse,  by  dealing  with  men,  by 
getting  them  to  do  something.  In  order  to 
make  them  do  it,  in  order  to  govern,  you 
must  understand,  and  the  rulers  of  mankind 
are  the  wisest  of  the  species.  They  sum- 
marize society.  Solomon,  Caesar,  Hilde- 
brand,  Lincoln,  Bismarck,  these  men  knew 
their  world. 

But  if  a  virtuous  ruler  be  the  prototype 
of  all  possible  human  fulfilment,  there  is  no 
other  art  or  province  of  employment  to  which 
the  same  views  do  not  apply.  When  any 
man  reaps  some  of  the  power  which  his  toil 
has  sown,  and  throws  it  out  as  a  note  or  a 
book  or  a  statue,  it  has  an  organic  relation 
to  the  human  soul  and  is  valuable  forever. 
There  is  only  one  rule  of  art.  Let  a  man 
work  at  a  thing  till  it  looks  right  to  him. 
Let  him  adjust  and  refine  it  till,  as  he  looks 
at  it,  it  passes  straight  into  him,  and  he 
grows  for  a  moment  unconscious  again,  that 

lOO 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

the  forces  which  produced  it  may  be  satis- 
fied. As  it  stands  then,  it  is  the  best  he 
can  do.  In  so  far  as  we  completely  develop 
this  power  we  become  completely  happy  and 
completely  useful,  for  our  acts,  our  state- 
ments, our  notes,  our  books,  our  statues 
become  universally  significant. 

Once  feel  this  truth,  and  you  begin  to  lose 
the  sense  of  your  identity,  to  know  that  your 
destiny,  your  self,  is  an  organic  part  of  all 
men.  It  is  they  that  speak.  It  is  them- 
selves that  have  been  found  and  expressed. 
It  was  this  toward  which  we  tended,  this 
that  we  cared  for  —  action,  art,  intellect, 
unselfishness,   are  they  not  one  thing? 

The  complete  development  of  every  indi- 
vidual is  necessary  to  our  complete  happi- 
ness. And  there  is  no  reason  why  any  one 
who  has  ever  been  to  a  dull  dinner  party 
should  doubt  this.  Nay,  history  gives  proof 
that  solitude  is  dangerous.  Man  cannot 
sing,  nor  write,  nor  paint,  nor  reform,  nor 
build,  nor  do  anything  except  die,  alone. 
The  reasons  for  this  are  showered  upon  us 
by  the  idea  of  Froebel,  no  matter  which  side 
of  it  is  turned  toward  us. 

This  philosophy  which  seemed  so  dry  till 
we  began  to  see  what  it  meant,  begins  now 
to  circumscribe  God  and  include  everything. 
xox 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

For  Christ  himself  was  one  whose  thoughts 
were  laws  and  whose  deeds  are  universal 
truth.  Shakespeare's  plays  are  universal 
truth.  They  are  the  projection  of  a  com- 
pletely developed  and  completely  uncon- 
scious human  intellect.  They  educated 
Germany,  and  it  is  to  the  study  of  them 
that  Hegel's  view  of  life  is  due.  The  great 
educational  forces  in  the  world  are  propor- 
tioned in  power  to  the  development  of  the 
individual  man  in  the  epochs  they  date  from. 
Here  and  there,  out  of  a  hotbed,  arises  a 
personal  influence  which  directs  thought  for 
a  thousand  years  and  qualifies  time  forever. 

The  division  of  the  old  ethics  into  egoism 
and  altruism  receives  the  sanction  of  sci- 
ence. The  turning  of  the  attention  upon 
selfish  ends,  no  matter  how  remote  nor  how 
momentary,  hurts  the  organism,  contracts 
the  intellect,  dries  up  the  emotions,  and  is 
felt  as  unhappiness.  The  turning  of  the 
attention  toward  public  aims  benefits  the 
organism,  enlarges  the  intellect,  and  is  felt 
as  happiness.  There  is  no  complexity  pos- 
sible, for  any  mixed  motive  is  a  selfish 
motive. 

All  the  virtues  are  different  names  for  the 
injunction  of  self-mastery,  by  which  the  in- 
ternal struggle  is  made  more  severe,  and  the 

I02 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

force  cooped  in  and  controlled  until  it  is 
released  in  the  functioning  of  the  whole 
man. 

In  any  sincere  struggle  for  right,  then,  no 
matter  how  petty,  we  are  fighting  for  man- 
kind, and  this  is  just  what  everybody  has 
always  known,  always  believed. 

It  is  thrown  a^:  us  as  a  great  paradox,  that 
somebody  must  pay  the  bills;  that  if  you 
live  upon  charity  and  can  succeed  in  getting 
yourself  crucified,  you  are  still  a  mere  prod- 
uct of  thrift  and  selfishness  somewhere. 
But  the  paradox  is  the  same  if  put  the  other 
way,  for  selfishness  would  never  support 
you. 

The  question  is  purely  one  of  fact,  what 
thing  comes  first,  what  thing  satisfies  the 
heart  of  man.  He  may  support  himself 
merely  as  a  means  to  help  others.  A  man 
may  start  a  pauper  and  die  a  millionaire,  and 
yet  never  think  a  thought  or  do  an  act  which 
does  not  add  to  the  welfare  of  man.  It  is  a 
question  of  ultimate  controlling  intention. 

Man  the  microcosm  is  a  kingdom  where 
reigns  continual  war.  Now  he  is  a  furnace 
of  love,  the  next  moment  he  is  a  mean 
scamp.  We  know  very  little  about  the 
mechanism  by  which  these  microcosms  com- 
municate with  one  another.  It  seems  likely 
103 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

that  every  iota  of  feeling  must  be  either 
transmitted  or  transformed;  that  if  a  spasm 
of  selfishness  be  conveyed,  or  some  part  of 
it,  even  by  a  glimpse  of  the  eye,  it  must 
leave  a  record  of  injury  and  start  on  a  career 
of  injury,  just  so  much  loss  to  the  world. 
On  the  other  hand  it  may  be  transformed  into 
the  other  kind  of  force  and  expended  later 
in  good. 

The  thing  is  governed  by  some  simple 
law,  although  man  has  not  yet  been  able  to 
reduce  it  to  algebra.  What  is  most  curious 
is  this,  that  the  tendency  of  any  man  to 
believe  in  the  reaction  as  a  law,  is  not  de- 
pendent upon  his  scientific  training,  but 
upon  his  moral  experience.  The  best  heads 
in  physics  will  still  betray  a  belief  that  a 
man  must  be  able  to  afford  to  be  unselfish, 
that  selfishness  often  does  good,  that  it  is  a 
muddled  up  affair,  and  a  thing  outside  of 
science  which  they  will  get  round  to  later. 
Everybody  sees  a  few  degrees  in  the  arc  of 
this  law.  Read  the  index  on  the  quadrant 
and  you  will  have  his  character.  Now  and 
then  some  saint  swears  he  sees  a  circle. 

Let  us  press  the  inquest.      It  is  not  likely 

that  life  itself  is  duplex  or  consists  of  two 

kinds  of  force,  one  egoistic,  one  altruistic. 

The  likelihood  is  the  other  way.     There  is 

104 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

only  one  force  which  vibrates  through  these 
organisms.  It  is  absolutely  beneficent  only 
when  it  completely  controls  one  of  them,  so 
that  the  whole  thing  sings  together. 

This  music  is  the  highest,  but  the  notes 
that  go  to  make  it  up  are  everywhere.  Altru- 
ism does  not  arise,  is  not  imposed  from  with- 
out, at  any  period  or  by  any  crisis,  by  progress 
or  by  society.  The  spiral  unwinds  with  the 
unwinding  life  upon  the  globe.  It  is  the 
form  of  illusion  under  which  all  life  pro- 
ceeds. It  is  the  law  of  mind.  The  eye 
treats  space  and  color  as  entities.  It  can- 
not see  on  any  other  terms.  The  stomach 
digests  food,  but  not  its  own  lining.  We 
are  obliged  to  think  in  terms  of  the  objec- 
tive universe.  We  are  not  wholesome  unless 
we  are  self-forgetting.  There  is  no  cranny 
in  all  the  million  manifestations  of  nature 
where  you  can  interfere  between  the  organism 
and  its  object  without  representing  disease. 

And  man  is  more  than  a  mere  altruistic 
animal.  At  least  the  religions  of  Humanity 
have  never  expressed  him.  At  those  times 
when  he  is  entirely  unselfish  and  therefore 
entirely  himself,  when  he  feels  himself  to 
be  one  single  well-spring,  all  unselfishness, 
all  love,  all  reverence,  all  service  to  some- 
thing not  himself,  yet  something  personal, 
105 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

he  has  faith.  The  theologies  are  attempts 
to  formulate  this  state  of  mind  in  order  that 
it  may  be  preserved.  It  is  clear  enough  that 
every  mind  must  speak  in  its  own  symbols, 
and  that  the  symbols  of  one  must  always 
appear  to  another  as  illusions.  Yet  each 
man  for  himself  knows  he  faces  a  reality. 
This  is  a  psychological  necessity.  Destroy 
the  belief,  and  on  the  instant  he  changes. 
Show  him  that  he  is  the  victim  of  an  illu- 
sion, and  he  is  divided,  a  half  man.  A  man 
whose  mind  is  divided,  as,  for  instance,  by 
the  consciousness  of  a  personal  motive,  can- 
not believe.  He  stands  like  the  wicked  king 
in  the  play  of  Hamlet ;  unable  to  pray.  It 
is  a  psychological  impossibility. 

The  concern  of  mankind  for  their  forms 
of  doctrine  is  gratuitous.  Faith  re-appears 
under  new  names.  You  cannot  convince  a 
lover  that  he  is  bent  on  self-development, 
nor  any  decent  man  that  he  does  not  believe 
in,  is  not  controlled  by  something  higher  than 
himself.     The  question  is  not  one  of  words. 

We  may  trace  this   reverent  attitude   of 

mind  upward  through  the  acts  and  activities 

of  the   spirit,  and    it  makes   no   difference 

whether  we  regard  religion   as   the  source 

and  origin  of  them  all  or  as  the  summary  of 

them  all. 

106 


EDUCATION:   FROEBEL 

In  Shakespeare's  plays  we  see  a  cycle  of 
human  beings,  the  most  living  that  we  have 
ever  met  with,  and  the  absence  of  mystical 
or  emotional  religion  from  many  of  the  plays 
is  one  of  the  wonders  of  nature.  There  is 
no  God  anywhere,  and  God  is  everywhere; 
we  are  not  offended.  The  reason  may  be 
that  the  element  has  been  employed  in  the 
act  of  creation.  Religion  has  been  con- 
sumed in  the  development  of  character.  It 
is  felt  in  the  relation  of  Shakespeare  to  the 
characters.  It  is  here  seen  as  artistic  per- 
fection. The  same  is  true  of  the  Greek 
statues  and  of  the  Sistine  Sibyls,  and  of 
other  work  left  by  those  two  periods,  the 
only  other  periods  in  which  the  individual 
attained  completion. 

Observe  that  in  all  this  philosophy  there 
is  no  dogma  anywhere,  no  term  whose  defini- 
tion you  have  to  learn,  no  term  which  makes 
the  lying  claim  that  it  can  be  used  twice 
with  the  same  connotation.  Froebel  had 
the  instinct  of  a  poet  and  knew  his  language 
was  figurative.  It  was  this  that  freed  him 
from  the  Middle  Ages  and  gave  him  to  the 
future.  He  took  theology  as  lightly  as  he 
took  metaphysics.  He  did  not  impose  them, 
he  evoked  them.  He  lived  and  thought  in 
the  spirit. 

107 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

If  you  turn  from  Froebel's  analysis  of 
human  nature  to  Goethe's,  there  seem  to  be 
a  thousand  years  between  them.  The  one 
is  scientific,  the  other  is  mediaeval.  The 
one  has  freed  himself  from  the  influences  of 
the  revival  of  learning,  the  other  has  not. 
The  one  is  open,  the  other  is  closed.  The 
one  is  free,  the  other  is  self-conscious.  But 
Froebel  has  not  yet  set  free  the  rest  of  the 
race,  and  of  course  the  literature  and  prac- 
tices of  the  kindergartners  are  full  of  dog- 
mas. The  terms  of  Froebel  are  a  snare  to 
those  whose  interest  in  childhood  came  later 
than  their  interest  in  education  and  whose 
attention  is  fixed  upon  the  terms  rather  than 
upon  the  child.  He  is  easy  reading  to  the 
other  sort. 

But  more  important  than  Froebel's  formu- 
lation of  these  great  truths  was  his  formula- 
tion of  subsidiary  truths.  I  do  not  mean 
his  labored  systems,  but  his  practical  sug- 
gestions born  of  experience  as  to  how  to 
help  another  person  to  develop.  It  was 
these  methods,  this  attitude  of  the  teacher 
towards  the  child,  of  the  individual  towards 
his  fellow,  that  came  at  me  in  my  own  house 
unexpectedly,  emanating  from  some  unknown 
mind,  which  seemed  so  great  as  practically 
to  include  Christianity. 
io8 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

"Do  not  imagine,"  he  says  at  every  mo- 
ment, "that  you  can  do  anything  for  this 
creature  except  by  getting  it  to  move  spon- 
taneously. You  have  not  begun  till  you 
have  done  this,  and  remember  that  anything 
else  you  do  is  just  so  much  harm, " 

He  was  never  tired  of  suggesting  devices 
for  doing  this.  The  following  passage  gives 
in  a  few  words  the  answer  to  the  most  im- 
portant practical  question  in  life :  how  we 
ought  to  approach  another  human  being. 
The  thing  is  said  so  simply,  it  seems  almost 
commonplace,  yet  it  comes  from  one  greater 
than  Kant. 

"Between  educator  and  pupil,  between 
request  and  obedience,  there  should  invisi- 
bly rule  a  third  something  to  which  educa- 
tor and  pupil  are  equally  subject.  This 
third  something  is  the  rigJit,  the  best,  neces- 
sarily conditioned  and  expressed  without 
arbitrariness  in  the  circumstances.  The 
calm  recognition,  the  clear  knowledge,  and 
the  serene,  cheerful  obedience  to  the  rule  of 
this  third  something,  is  the  particular  feat- 
ure that  should  be  constantly  and  clearly 
manifest  in  the  bearing  and  the  conduct  of 
the  educator  and  teacher,  and  often  firmly 
and  sternly  emphasized  by  him." 

Beneath  this  statement  there  lies  a  law  of 
X09 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

reaction.  The  human  organism  responds  in 
kind.  Strike  a  man  and  he  strikes,  sneer 
and  he  sneers,  forget  and  he  forgets.  If  you 
wish  to  convince  him  that  you  are  right, 
concede  that  from  his  point  of  view,  he  is 
right,  then  move  the  point  and  he  follows. 
If  you  keep  your  temper  in  teaching  a  child, 
you  teach  him  to  keep  his  temper,  and  this 
is  more  important  than  his  lesson. 

The  difficulty  we  find  is  to  resist  the  reac- 
tion in  ourselves  to  some  one  else's  initia- 
tive. The  affair  is  outside  the  province  of 
reason,  and  results  from  a  transfer  of  force 
by  means  which  we  do  not  understand.  The 
command  to  "  turn  the  other  cheek "  is  a 
picturesque  figure  for  the  attitude  which 
will  enable  you  to  prevail  the  quickest 
and  by  the  highest  means,  and  which 
Froebel  enables  us  to  see  in  its  scientific 
aspect. 

But  it  is  unnecessary  to  illustrate  further 
what  any  one  who  comes  in  contact  with  a 
kindergarten  will,  through  all  the  mists  of 
dogma  and  ignorance  which  overspread  the 
place,  discover  for  himself.  We  have  a  sci- 
ence founded  upon  human  nature,  applied  to 
education.  Mr.  Hughes  in  his  closing  para- 
graph uses  the  language  of  theology,  but  he 
makes  no  overstatement :  — 
no 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

"When  Froebel's  ethical  teaching  has 
wrought  its  perfect  work  in  the  homes,  the 
schools,  and  the  churches,  then  his  complete 
ideal,  which  is  the  gospel  ideal  in  practice, 
will  be  the  greatest  controlling  and  uplift- 
ing force  in  the  world." 

One  word  more  about  the  relation  between 
Froebel's  thought  and  current  science. 

The  view  of  man  as  an  active  animal,  a 
struggler,  alive  and  happy  only  in  activity, 
falls  in  naturally  with  what  we  know  of  the 
animal  kingdom.  The  philosophers  are  at 
war  over  science  and  religion,  over  the  ori- 
gin of  the  non-self-regarding  instincts.  By 
an  external  consideration  of  the  animal  hier- 
archy they  have  come  to  certain  conclusions 
which  they  strive  to  apply  to  the  highest 
animal,  man.  There  is  great  boggling  over 
him;  because  these  non-self-regarding  in- 
stincts, which  are  not  very  apparent  from  the 
outside,  seem  to  conflict  with  certain  gen- 
eralizations relative  to  the  conservation  of 
species.  The  scientists  look  into  a  drop  of 
water  and  see  animals  eating  each  other  up. 
What  they  have  not  seen  is  that  all  this 
ferocity  goes  forward,  subject  to  customs  as 
rigid  as  a  military  code,  and  that  it  is  this 
code  which  conserves  the  species.  The 
"  struggle  for  existence  "  as  it  is  commonly 
III 


EDUCATION:    FROEBEL 

conceived  would  exterminate  in  short  order 
any  species  that  indulged  in  it. 

Meanwhile  Froebel,  beginning  at  the  other 
end  of  the  scale  and  studying  life  from  the 
inside,  has  established  certain  facts,  certain 
laws,  which  have  as  great  a  weight,  and  de- 
serve as  much  to  be  carried  downward  in 
the  scale,  as  the  generalizations  of  the  nat- 
uralists (very  likely  imperfect)  have  to  be 
carried  upward. 

The  animal  man  is  unselfish.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  make  his  organism  vibrate  as  a  unity 
except  by  some  emotion  which  can  be  shown 
to  be  non-self-regarding.  At  what  point  in 
the  scale  of  nature  does  this  quality  begin  to 
manifest  itself .-'  Is  the  dog  happy  when  he 
is  selfish ;  do  the  laws  of  psychology  outlined 
by  Froebel  apply,  and  to  what  extent  do  they 
apply,  to  the  horse  or  the  monkey  .-*  These 
things  must  be  patiently  studied,  and  the 
corrections  must  be  made.  In  the  mean 
time,  in  dealing  with  man  himself,  we  are 
obliged  to  rely  upon  the  latest  scientific  re- 
port of  him,  however  imperfect,  and  until 
Froebel' s  laws  are  destroyed,  we  need  not 
attempt  to  adjust  our  ideas  of  man  to  the 
dogmas  developed  by  the  study  of  the  lower 
animals. 


112 


DEMOCRACY 


IV 

DEMOCRACY 

The  system  of  choosing  public  officials  by 
popular  vote  is  properly  enough  called  De- 
mocracy. The  terms  of  tenure  and  nomen- 
clature, etc.,  are  matters  of  detail.  If  we 
are  to  seek  any  test  as  to  what  constitutes  a 
Democracy,  we  may  as  well  take  as  a  test 
the  formal  setting  up  at  a  particular  time  of 
some  scheme  of  government  by  the  popular 
will.  England  has  been  a  democracy  since 
the  Act  of  Settlement,  and  if  it  be  said  that 
universal  suffrage  was  not  then  known,  the 
answer  is  that  it  is  not  known  now,  and 
never  can  be  known.  The  exclusions  of 
women  and  non-naturalized  residents  or  even 
of  criminals  and  lunatics  are  matters  of  con- 
venience.    It  is  a  question  of  degree. 

Again,  it  is  impossible  that  all  the  officials 
should  be  elected,  and  the  assignment  to  the 
elected  officials  of  the  power  to  appoint  the 
others  is  a  matter  of  convenience.  The  very 
simple  expedients  adopted  by  the  framers  of 
US 


DEMOCRACY 

the  United  States  Constitution  were  the  re- 
sult of  English  experience  and  French  the- 
ory. The  intellect  of  France  had,  during 
the  eighteenth  century,  put  into  portable 
form  the  ideas  that  had  been  at  work  in 
England's  institutions.  The  theoretical  part 
of  it,  the  division  of  government  into  three 
departments,  had  been  worked  out  from 
European  experience  going  back  to  Greek 
times.  The  written  constitution  was  a  mere 
expansion  of  the  Bill  of  Rights.  Our  Fram 
ers  were  men  who  had  had  personal  experi- 
ence in  governing  under  the  English  system 
in  force  in  the  colonies,  where^the  power  of 
practical  self-government  had  been  devel- 
oped by  isolation.  They  received  from  the 
French  a  scientific  view  of  that  system. 
They  had  learned  by  experience  that  a  con- 
federacy was  not  a  government,  and  they  pro- 
ceeded to  bind  the  country  together  by  the 
grant  of  that  power  which  defines  govern- 
ment, the  power  to  tax.  The  extension  to  a 
large  territory  of  a  system  which  was  in  prac- 
tical operation  in  all  its  parts,  was  in  one 
sense  a  miracle  of  intelligence,  in  another 
sense  it  was  the  only  conceivable  solution  of 
the  problem  of  unity.  Philosophers  speak 
of  Democracy  as  if  it  were  the  outcome  of 
choice.  It  has  been  the  outcome  of  events. 
ii6 


DEMOCRACY 

No  other  system  would  have  endured,  and 
every  formula  of  government  that  did  not 
embody  an  old  usage  would  have  been  trans- 
formed in  ten  years  by  the  popular  will  into 
something  that  did. 

The  reason  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  is  the  most  remarkable  document  in 
existence  is  that  it  contained  so  little  of 
novelty.  The  election  of  some  officers  and 
the  appointment  of  the  rest,  that  was  what 
the  people  were  used  to.  That  is  democ- 
racy. There  is  of  course  no  such  thing  as  a 
pure  democracy,  or  a  pure  monarchy.  Every 
government  is  in  practice  the  outcome  of 
forces  of  which  a  very  small  fraction  are 
expressed  in  its  constitution  and  laws. 

A  constitution  is  a  profession  of  faith,  a 
summary  written  on  a  bulletin  board,  and  so 
far  good.  The  United  States  had  this  ad- 
vantage in  starting  upon  her  career,  that  the 
bulletin  was  a  very  accurate  summary  of  ex- 
isting customs,  and  was  in  itself  an  inspiring 
proof  of  the  virtue  of  the  people.  We  are 
driven  into  admiring  the  Colonists  as  among 
the  most  enlightened  of  their  kind.  It  is 
true  that  the  revolution  was  conducted,  and 
the  Constitution  adopted  by  the  activity  of 
a  small  minority.  But  this  is  true  of  all 
revolutions.  The  point  is  that  the  leaders 
-        "7 


DEMOCRACY 

represented  sense  and  virtue.      The  people 
followed. 

The  moment  the  scheme  was  launched  it 
became  the  sport  of  the  elements.  In  the 
North  a  trading  bourgeoisie  grew  up  under 
it.  In  the  South  a  slave-holding  oligarchy, 
a  society  so  fantastically  out  of  touch  with 
the  modern  world  that  it  seems  like  some- 
thing left  over  from  the  times  before  Christ, 
found  no  difficulty  in  making  use  of  the 
forms  of  Democracy.  During  the  half  cen- 
tury that  followed,  these  two  societies  be- 
came so  hostile  to  each  other  that  conflict 
was  inevitable,  and  there  ensued  a  death- 
grapple  in  four  years  of  war,  a  war  to  ex- 
tinction. At  the  end  of  the  war  no  trace  of 
the  oligarchy  remained  upon  the  face  of  the 
earth.  And  yet  these  forms  of  government 
survived  and  began  to  operate  immediately, 
under  new  auspices  of  course,  deflected  by 
new  passions,  showing  new  shapes  of  distor- 
tion, yet  ideally  the  same.  The  only  com- 
mon element  between  the  north  and  the 
south  was  the  reverence  for  these  forms  of 
government. 

Meanwhile  civilization  had  been  creeping 
westward  in  a  margin  of  frontier  life,   con- 
ducted   under  these    forms.       Behind    this 
moved  a  belt  of  farming  and  village  life,  at 
ii8 


DEMOCRACY 

war  with  the  backwoods  ideals,  but  using  the 
same  forms  of  government.  Then  arose  the 
railroad  era  and  tore  millions  of  money  from 
the  continent,  heaped  it  in  cities,  obliterated 
State  lines,  centralized  everything,  con- 
trolled everything,  ruled  everybody  —  still 
under  these  forms. 

Let  us  examine  them. 

The  problem  of  government  is  to  protect 
the  individuals  in  a  community  against  each 
other,  and  to  protect  them  all  against  the 
rest  of  the  world.  The  power  to  interfere 
and  the  power  to  represent  must  be  lodged 
somewhere,  and  the  question  is  how  to  ar- 
range it  so  that  this  power  shall  not  be 
turned  against  the  people.  Democracy 
solves  it  by  election.  Let  the  people  choose 
their  rulers.  Instantly  every  man  is  turned 
into  a  custodian,  a  part  of  him  is  dedicated 
to  the  public.  He  is  prevented  by  funda- 
mental theory  of  law  from  being  absolutely 
selfish.  Corrupt  him  how  you  will,  deflect 
him,  play  upon  him,  degrade,  deceive  him, 
you  cannot  shut  him  off  from  this  influence. 
The  framework  of  government  makes  con- 
tinuous appeal  to  the  highest  within  him. 
It  draws  him  as  the  moon  draws  the  sea. 
This  appeal  is  one  to  which  the  organic 
nature  of  man  responds,  as  we  have  seen. 
"9. 


DEMOCRACY 

For  man  is  an  unselfish  animal.  The  law 
of  his  nature  is  expressed  in  the  framework 
of  government.  The  arrangement  shows  a 
wisdom  so  profound  that  all  historical  phi- 
losophy grows  cheap  before  it. 

If  you  jump  from  the  study  of  psychology 
straight  into  the  theory  of  democracy,  you 
see  why  it  was  that  the  allegiance  to  the 
ideas  of  the  United  States  Constitution  en- 
dured through  slavery,  through  the  carpet- 
bag era,  through  the  Tweed  ring.  It  was 
not  the  letter,  but  the  spirit  which  was 
inextinguishable. 

It  has  taken  a  century  of  pamphlets  to 
break  down  the  distinctions  between  men 
based  upon  orders  of  nobility,  property, 
creed,  etc.  Fifteen  minutes  of  psychology 
would  have  levelled  men  and  set  them  upon 
the  same  footing  as  that  upon  which  they 
walk  into  a  hospital. 

The  creature  man  is  by  this  system  dealt 
with  so  simply  as  he  had  not  been  dealt  with 
since  the  birth  of  Christ.  It  must  be  con- 
ceded that  the  thing  could  not  even  have 
been  tried,  except  with  a  people  familiar 
with  the  distinctions  between  legislative, 
executive,  and  judicial  power,  criminal  and 
civil  law,  etc.  Altruistic  impulse  would 
not  have  sufficed  to  execute  itself.     But  the 

X20 


DEMOCRACY 

divisions  and  forms  of  thought  expressive  of 
that  altruism  already  existed,  and  were  in 
operation,   as  we  have  seen. 

It  is  thought  that  the  peculiar  merit  of 
Democracy  lies  in  this :  that  it  gives  to 
every  man  a  chance  to  pursue  his  own  ends. 
The  reverse  is  true.  The  merit  lies  in  the 
assumption  imposed  upon  every  man  that  he 
shall  serve  his  fellow  men.  This  is  by  the 
law  of  his  being  his  only  chance  for  happiness. 
You  cannot  find  a  man  who  does  not  know  this. 
If  you  examine  the  consciousness  of  any 
typical  minion  of  success,  you  will  find  that 
his  source  of  inward  content  lies  in  a  belief 
that  his  success  has  benefited  somebody  —  his 
kindred,  his  townsfolk  —  mankind. 

The  concentration  of  every  man  on  his 
own  interests  has  been  the  danger  and 
not  the  safety  of  Democracy;  for  De- 
mocracy contemplates  that  every  man  shall 
think  first  of  the  State  and  next  of  himself. 
This  is  its  only  justification.  In  so  far  as 
it  is  operated  by  men  who  are  thinking  first 
of  their  own  interests  and  then  of  the  State, 
its  operation  is  distorted. 

Democracy  assumes  perfection  in  human 
nature.  In  so  far  as  an  official  or  a  voter  is 
corrupt,  you  will  have  bad  government.  Or 
to  put  the  same  thing  in  another  way,  all 

121 


DEMOCEACY 

corruption  is  shown  up  as  a  loss  of  the  power 
of  self-government.  The  framework  of  gov- 
ernment lies  there  exposed  in  all  its  parts 
like  a  vast  and  complex  dial,  recording  with 
the  nicety  of  a  scientific  instrument  every 
departure  from  virtue  of  the  human  beings 
whose  lives,  whose  standards,  whose  very 
thoughts  are  registered  against  it.  When 
selfishness  reaches  a  certain  point,  the  ma- 
chine stops.  Government  by  force  comes 
in.  We  have  had  railroad  riots  and  iron 
foundry  riots.  In  Denver  not  many  months 
ago  thirty  thousand  people,  or  about  one-fifth 
of  the  population,  engaged  in  a  carnival  of 
destruction  and  raided  a  picnic  given  by  the 
Cattle  Association.  These  ebullitions,  which 
look  like  mania,  are  nothing  but  an  acute 
form  of  blind  selfishness,  due  to  the  educa- 
tion of  a  period  in  which  everything  has 
been  settled  by  an  appeal  to  the  self-interest 
of  the  individual.  The  Bryanism,  with  which 
we  must  all  sympathize,  is  nothing  but  a  re- 
volt on  the  part  of  the  poorer  classes  against 
the  exploitation  of  the  country  by  the  capi- 
talist, due  to  pension  laws,  tariffs,  trusts, 
etc.  "  Something  must  now  be  done  for 
me,"  says  the  laboring  man,  and  the  mine 
owner  says  "Silver."  The  appeal  is  by  a 
little  manipulation  worked  up  into  a  craze, 

122 


DEMOCRACY 

with  the  result  that  property  is  unsafe.  The 
craze  is  a  craze  of  mistaken  selfishness.  One 
of  the  weapons  with  which  the  richer  classes 
fought  it  was  corruption.  They  fed  the  ele- 
ment which  was  devouring  them.  There  is 
talk  of  bayonets,  and  it  is  true  that  either 
bayonets  or  public  spirit  must  in  such  cases 
be  the  issue.  We  cannot  have  property  at 
the  mercy  of  a  mob,  and  if  any  single  state 
like  Colorado  were  separated  from  the  rest, 
and  the  spirit  of  unreason  should  possess  it 
utterly,  government  by  force  would  ensue. 
Elections  would  be  superseded,  and  property 
would  improvise  some  mode  of  practical 
government  which  every  intelligent  man 
would  back.  The  danger  of  an  episode  of 
this  sort  is  that  it  interrupts  the  course  of 
things.  It  is  revolution.  It  is  the  break- 
down of  democracy,  and  tends  to  perpetuate 
the  conditions  of  incompetence  out  of  which 
the  crisis  arises.  Fortunately  the  country  is 
so  large  that  one  State  holds  up  the  next.  No 
community  would  tolerate  a  state  of  siege 
for  more  than  six  months,  and  the  State 
would  return  to  educational  methods,  weaker 
but  alive. 

A  military  imposition  of  order  is  then  the 
extreme  case.  But  the  Boss  system  is  the 
halfway   house   in   the    breakdown   of    free 

133 


DEMOCRACY 

government.  In  the  Boss  system  we  have 
seen  a  lack  of  virtue  in  the  people  show 
itself  in  the  shape  of  a  government,  in  fact 
autocratic,  but  in  form  republican.  Here 
again  the  loss  in  the  power  of  self-govern- 
ment is  apparent. 

But  there  is  no  departure  from  civic  virtue 
which  can  get  by  unnoticed.  Take  the  case 
of  a  voter  who  submits  to  having  his  street 
kept  dirty  because  he  fears  that  a  protest 
would  make  him  disagreeably  conspicuous. 
Here  also  the  loss  of  power  of  self-govern- 
ment is  traceably  recorded.  So  much  sel- 
fishness—  so  much  filth. 

If  we  now  recur  for  a  moment  to  the 
state  of  things  described  in  the  essay  on  poli- 
tics, we  see  that  our  government  in  all  its 
branches  has  reflected  the  occupation  and 
spiritual  state  of  the  people  very  perfectly. 
But  outside  of  the  recurrent  and  regular 
political  activity  of  the  country,  there  has 
grown  up  during  the  past  few  years  a  sort  of 
guerilla  warfare  of  reform.  This  represents 
the  conservative  morality  of  the  community, 
the  instinct  of  right  government  which  re- 
sents the  treason  to  our  institutions  seen 
in  their  operation  for  private  gain.  The 
reformers'  methods  of  work  are  necessarily 
democratic,  and  it  is  here  that  the  most 
124 


DEMOCRACY 

delicate  tests  of  self-seeking  are  to  be  found. 
These  reformers  desire  to  increase  the  un- 
selfishness in  the  world,  yet  the  moment 
they  attempt  a  practical  reform  they  are  told 
that  any  appeal  to  an  unselfish  motive  in 
politics  means  sure  failure.  They  accord- 
ingly make  every  variety  of  endeavor  to  use 
the  selfishness  of  some  one  as  a  lever  to  in- 
crease the  unselfishness  of  somebody  else. 
The  thing  is  worked  out  in  daylight  time 
after  time,  year  after  year,  and  the  results 
are  recorded  in  millegrams.  No  obscurity 
is  possible  because  every  man  stands  on  the 
same  footing.  Our  minds  are  not  obscured 
by  thinking  that  A  must  be  sincere  because 
he  is  a  bishop,  or  need  not  be  sincere  be- 
cause he  is  a  lord. 

There  is  no  landlord  class  with  prejudices, 
no  socialist  class  with  theories.  There  are 
no  interests  except  money  interests,  and 
against  money  the  fight  is  made.  If  a  man 
is  a  traitor  it  is  because  he  has  been  bought. 
The  results,  stated  in  terms  of  ethical  theory, 
are  simply  startling. 

A  reform  movement  employs  a  paid  secre- 
tary. In  so  far  as  he  gets  the  place  because 
of  his  reform  principles  he  represents  an 
appeal  to  selfishness.  This  is  instantly  re- 
flected in  his  associates,  it  colors  the  move- 

"5 


DEMOCRACY 

merit.  He  himself  is  attracted  partly  by  the 
pay.  By  an  operation  as  impossible  to  avoid 
as  the  law  of  gravity  he  enlists  others  who 
are  also  partially  self-seeking. 

A  Good  Government  Club  is  formed  by 
X,  and  every  member  is  called  upon  for  dues 
and  work.  It  thrives.  Another  is  founded 
by  Y  and  supported  by  him  because  of  his 
belief  that  reform  cannot  support  itself  but 
must  be  subsidized.  Inside  of  three  weeks 
the  existence  of  X's  Club  is  threatened,  be- 
cause its  members  hear  that  Y's  Club  is 
charitably  supported  and  they  themselves 
wish  relief.  They  are  turned  from  workers 
into  strikers  by  the  mere  report  that  there 
is  money  somewhere.  Spend  ^loo  on  the 
Club,  and  Tammany  will  be  able  to  buy  it 
when  the  need  arises.  So  frightfully  accu- 
rate is  the  record  of  an  appeal  to  self-interest 
made  in  the  course  of  reform,  that  no  one 
who  watches  such  an  attempt  can  ever  there- 
after hope  to  do  evil  that  good  may  come. 

The  system  lays  bare  the  operation  of 
forces  hitherto  merely  suspected.  Democ- 
racy makes  the  bold  cut  across  every  man 
and  divides  him  into  a  public  man  and  a 
private  man.  It  is  a  man-ometer.  You 
could  by  means  of  it  stand  up  in  line  every 
man  in  New  York,  grading  them  according 
126 


DEMOCRACY 

to  the  ratio  of  principle  and  self-interest  in 
each. 

In  England  a  man  takes  office  as  the  pay 
for  services  to  the  government.  In  America 
he  does  the  same.  It  is  part  of  their  system, 
part  of  our  corruption.  This  may  seem  a 
small  point,  but  it  will  work  out  large.  An 
absolute  standard  is  imposed.  That  our 
most  pronounced  reformers  are  far  from  un- 
derstanding their  duties  gives  proof  of  the 
degradation  of  the  times,  but  it  exalts  the 
plan  of  government.  These  men  will  lead 
a  reform  for  four  weeks,  as  a  great  favor,  a 
great  sacrifice,  under  protest,  apologizing  to 
business.  They  say  public  duties  come  first 
only  in  war  time.  They  give,  out  of  con- 
science and  with  the  left  hand,  what  remains 
after  a  feast  for  themselves.  And  these  are 
the  saints.  Tell  one  of  them  that  he  has  not 
set  an  honorable  standard  of  living  for  his 
contemporaries  unless,  having  his  wants 
supplied,  he  makes  public  activity  his  first 
aim  in  life,  and  he  will  reply  he  wishes 
he  could  do  so.  He  hopes  later  to  devote 
himself  to  such  things.  He  will  give  you 
a  subscription.  This  man  lives  in  a  De- 
mocracy but  he  denies  its  claims.  He  too 
is  recorded. 

The  English,  who  gave  us  all  we  know  of 
127 


DEMOCRACY 

freedom,  have  been  the  first  to  understand 
its  meaning.  They  too  have  suffered  dur- 
ing the  last  century  from  the  ravages  of 
plutocracy,  from  the  disease  of  commerce. 
But  they  had  behind  them  the  intellectual 
heritage  of  the  world.  They  had  bulwarks 
of  education,  philanthropy,  thought,  train- 
ing, ambition,  enthusiasm,  the  ideals  of 
man.  It  was  these  things,  this  reservoir  of 
spiritual  power,  that  turned  the  tide  of  com- 
mercialism in  England,  and  not  as  we  so 
cheaply  imagine  her  "  leisure  class. "  The 
men  and  women  who  in  the  last  ten  years 
have  taken  hold  of  the  Municipality  of  Lon- 
don, and  now  work  like  beavers  in  its  reform, 
are  not  rich.  Some  of  them  may  be  rich, 
but  the  force  that  makes  them  toil  comes 
neither  out  of  riches  nor  out  of  poverty,  but 
out  of  a  discovery  as  to  the  use  of  life. 
These  Englishmen  have  outlived  the  illusions 
of  business.  As  towards  them  we  are  like 
children.  If  it  were  a  matter  of  mere  riches 
we  have  wealth  enough  to  make  their  "  lei- 
sure class"  ridiculous.  If  there  must  be 
some  term  in  the  heaping  of  money  before 
the  energies  of  our  better  burghers  are  to  be 
diverted  toward  public  ends,  we  may  wait  till 
doomsday.  But  the  reaction  is  of  another 
sort,  and  is  very  simple.     Let  us  be  just  to 

128 


DEMOCRACY 

the  conscience-givers.  They  dare  not  give 
more.  The  American  is  ashamed  to  lose  a 
dollar.  He  does  not  want  the  dollar  half 
the  time,  but  he  will  lose  caste  if  he  fore- 
goes it.  Our  merchant  princes  go  on  spe- 
cial commissions  for  rapid  transit,  and 
receive  ;^5ooo  apiece.  They  must  be  paid. 
Out  of  custom  they  must  receive  pay  be- 
cause "their  time  is  valuable,"  and  thus  the 
virtue  and  meaning  of  their  office  receives  a 
soil :  they  do  not  work.  All  this  is,  even 
at  the  present  moment,  against  the  private 
instincts  of  many  of  them.  It  is  apparent 
that  they  stand  without,  shame-faced.  It 
needs  only  example  to  give  them  courage. 
A  few  more  reform  movements  in  which 
they  see  each  other  as  citizens,  will  knock 
the  shackles  from  their  imagination  and 
make  men  of  them.  And  then  we  shall 
have  reform  in  earnest.  For  with  this  en- 
franchisement will  come  their  great  awak- 
ening to  the  fact  that  not  they  only  but  all 
men  are  really  unselfish.  It  is  the  obscure 
disbelief  in  this  salvation  which  has  made 
reform  so  hard  where  it  might  be  so  easy. 
As  soon  as  the  reformers  shall  have  reformed 
themselves,  they  will  avoid  making  any  ap- 
peal to  self-interest  as  so  much  lost  time,  so 
much  corruption,  and  will  walk  boldly  upon 
9  i«9 


DEMOCRACY 

the    waves    of    idealism    which    will    hold 
them    up. 

If  commerce  has  been  our  ruin,  our  form 
of  government  is  our  salvation.  Imagine  a 
hereditary  aristocracy,  a  State  church,  a 
limited  monarchy  to  have  existed  here  dur- 
ing the  last  thirty  years.  By  this  time  it 
would  have  been  owned  hand  and  foot,  tied 
up  and  anchored  in  every  abuse,  engaged 
day  and  night  in  devising  new  yokes  for  the 
people.  The  interests  now  dominant  know 
the  ropes  and  do  their  best,  but  they  cannot 
corrupt  the  sea.  They  cannot  stop  the  con- 
tinual ferment  of  popular  election  and  re- 
form candidate.  The  whole  apparatus  of 
government  is  a  great  educational  machine 
which  no  one  can  stop.  The  power  of  light 
is  enlisted  on  the  side  of  order.  A  property 
qualification  would  have  been  an  anchor  to 
windward  for  the  unrighteous.  At  the  bot- 
tom of  the  peculiarly  hopeless  condition  of 
Philadelphia  lie  the  small  house  and  lot  of 
the  laboring  man.  They  can  be  taxed. 
They  can  be  cajoled  and  conjured  with. 
Corruption  is  entrenched. 

We  find  then   in   democracy  a  frame  of 
government  by  which  private  selfishness,  the 
bane  and  terror  of  all  government,  is  thrust 
130 


DEMOCRACY 

brutally  to  the  front  and  kept  there,  staring 
in  hideous  openness. 

Nothing  except  such  an  era  as  that  which 
we  have  just  come  through,  during  which 
we  have  grown  used  to  absolute  self-seeking 
as  the  normal  state  of  man,  could  so  have 
glazed  the  eyes  of  men  that  they  could  not 
see  thrift  even  in  a  public  official  as  a  crime, 
or  self-sacrifice  even  in  a  public  official  ex- 
cept as  a  folly.  And  yet  so  sound  is  the 
heart  of  man  that  in  spite  of  this  corruption 
and  debauchery,  the  American  people,  the 
masses  of  them,  are  the  most  promising 
people  extant.  We  have  a  special  disease. 
It  is  our  minds  which  have  been  injured. 
We  are  cross-eyed  with  business  selfishness 
and  open  to  the  heavens  on  all  other  sides. 
For  this  openness  we  must  thank  Democracy. 
Here  are  no  warped  beings,  but  sane  and 
healthy  creatures  under  a  temporary  spell. 
The  American  citizen,  by  escaping  the  super- 
stitions studded  over  Europe  since  the  days 
of  the  Roman  empire,  has  a  directer  view  of 
life  (when  he  shall  open  his  eyes)  than  any 
people  since  the  Elizabethans.  He  will 
have  no  prejudices.  He  will  be  empirical. 
But  he  must  forswear  thrift,  and  the  calcu- 
lating of  interest  in  his  sleep.  No  religious 
revival  will  help  us.  We  are  religious 
131 


DEMOCRACY 

enough  already.  It  is  our  relaxation.  Only 
the  painful  unwinding  of  that  intellectual 
knot  into  which  our  minds  are  tied, —  that 
state  of  intense  selfishness  during  which  we 
see  business  advancement  as  our  first  duty, 
taught  us  at  the  cradle,  enforced  by  example, 
inculcated  like  a  religion, —  can  make  us 
begin  to  operate  our  institutions  upon  the 
lines  on  which  they  alone  can  run  freely,  and 
we  ourselves  develop  normally.  This  un- 
winding will  come  through  a  simple  inspec- 
tion of  our  condition.  Let  no  one  worry 
about  the  forms  and  particular  measures  of 
betterment.  They  will  flow  naturally  from 
the  public  acknowledgment  by  the  individ- 
ual of  facts  which  he  privately  knows  and 
has  always  known  and  always  denied. 

This  goes  on  hourly.  Those  people  who 
do  not  see  it,  look  for  it  in  the  wrong  places. 
You  cannot  expect  it  to  show  itself  in  the 
public  offices.  They  are  the  strongholds  of 
the  enemy.  You  cannot  expect  it  to  appear 
very  often  in  the  children  of  captivity,  the 
upper  bourgeoisie.  These  men  are  easily 
put  to  sleep  and  will  take  the  promise  of 
a  politician  any  day  as  an  excuse  for  non- 
activity.  They  give  consent.  What  we 
want  is  assertion,  and  it  is  coming  like  a 
murmur  from  the  poorer  classes  who  desire 
132 


DEMOCRACY 

the  right  and  who  need  only  leadership  to 
make  them  honest. 

It  is  the  recurrent  tragedy  in  reform  move- 
ments that  the  merchants  put  forward  some- 
thing that  the  laboring  man  instantly  nails 
for  a  lie.  It  is  not  the  loss  of  the  election 
which  does  the  harm,  but  this  insult  to  the 
souls  of  men. 

Let  no  one  expect  the  millennium,  but  let 
us  play  fair.  We  can  see  that  our  stand- 
ards, particularly  among  the  well-to-do,  are 
so  low  that  mere  inspection  of  them  causes 
indignant  protest.  But  we  must  also  know 
that  when  we  accepted  democracy  as  our  form 
of  government  we  ranked  the  political  edu- 
cation of  the  individual  as  more  important 
than  the  expert  administration  of  govern- 
ment. This  last  can  come  only  as  a  result, 
not  as  a  precurser  of  the  other. 

The  example  of  a  whole  people,  mad  with 
one  passion,  living  under  a  system  which 
implies  the  abnegation  of  that  passion,  has 
laid  bare  the  heart  of  a  community,  has 
shown  the  interrelations  between  the  organs 
and  functions  of  a  society,  in  a  way  never 
before  visible  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
Everything  is  disturbed,  but  everything  is 
visible.  We  see  Literature,  a  mere  thread, 
yet  betraying  all  things ;  Architecture,  still 
»33 


DEMOCRACY 

submerged  in  commerce  but  showing  every 
year  some  vital  change;  Social  Life,  the 
mere  creature  of  abuses,  like  a  child  cov- 
ered with  scars,  but  growing  healthy;  the 
Drama,  a  drudge  to  thrift  every  way  and  yet 
palpably  alive.  By  the  light  of  these  things 
and  their  relation  to  each  other  we  may 
view  history. 

The  American  is  a  typical  being.  He  is 
a  creature  of  a  single  passion.  In  so  far  as 
Tyre  was  commercial  she  was  American. 
You  can  reconstruct  much  of  Venetian  poli- 
tics from  a  town  caucus.  In  so  far  as  Lon- 
don is  commercial  it  is  American.  You  can 
trace  the  thing  in  the  shape  of  a  handbill  in 
Moscow.  Or  to  take  the  matter  up  from  the 
other  side :  you  can,  by  taking  up  these  corre- 
lated ganglia  of  American  society,  which  do 
nevertheless  simply  represent  the  heart  of 
man,  and  are  always  present  in  every  society 
—  by  imagining  the  enlargement  of  one  func- 
tion, and  the  disuse  of  the  next,  you  can 
reconstruct  the  Greek  period  and  re-imagine 
Athens. 

No  wonder  the  sociologists  study  America. 
It  seems  as  if  the  key  and  cause  of  human 
progress  might  be  clutched  from  her  entrails. 


134 


GOVERNMENT 


GOVERNMENT 

When  two  men  are  fighting  and  agree  that 
they  will  stop  at  sundown,  we  have  govern- 
ment. Their  consent  is  government.  Their 
memory  of  that  consent  is  an  institution. 
There  never  was  a  government  of  any  kind 
or  for  any  purpose  that  did  not  rest  upon  the 
consent  of  the  governed ;  but  the  means  by 
which  the  consent  is  obtained  have  varied. 
The  consent  records  the  extent  to  which  the 
individuals  are  alike.  It  is  only  by  virtue 
of  similarity  in  the  governed  that  govern- 
ment exists.  On  a  ship,  all  men  are  alike  in 
their  danger  of  being  drowned,  and  they  con- 
sent to  dictation  from  the  captain  for  the  wel- 
fare of  all.  The  aim  of  the  despot  is  to  keep 
the  population  alike  in  their  need  of  him  or 
their  fear  of  him.  After  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, the  entire  French  people  were  alike 
both  in  their  desire  for  order  and  in  their  lack 
of  training  in  self-government.  A  dictator 
was  inevitable.  Gouverneur  Morris,  whose 
137 


GOVERNMENT 

experience  in  America  qualified  him  to 
judge,  saw  the  matter  clearly  as  early  as 
1791.  Napoleon  kept  the  people  alike,  by 
the  two  opposite  means  of  giving  them  so- 
cial order  and  foreign  war.  Henry  V.  kept 
himself  on  top  in  England  by  waging  war  in 
France.  Seward  in  1861  thought  to  unite 
the  people  of  the  United  States  by  declaring 
war  against  everybody  in  Europe.  The  Ger- 
man Emperor  is  sustained  to-day  by  the  pop- 
ular fear  of  France  and  Russia.  It  makes  no 
difference  what  foolishness  he  commits;  so 
long  as  that  fear  predominates  he  will  be 
absolute. 

For  the  converse  proposition  is  also  true, 
that  in  so  far  as  people  are  like-minded,  they 
must  be  ruled  by  a  single  mind,  A  hun- 
dred Malays  cannot  establish  a  representa- 
tive government.  They  must  have  a  boss. 
The  population  of  Russia  can  only  be  ruled 
by  a  Czar.  So  also  whenever  under  any  form 
of  government  all  the  people  want  one  thing, 
one  man  does  it.  The  reasons  for  it  are 
invented  afterwards,  and  "  war  powers "  are 
found  to  justify  the  proclamation  setting  the 
slaves  free. 

The  extent  to  which  people  are  similar  to 
each  other  will  be  recorded  in  their  institu- 
tions; in  fact,  those  institutions  are  nothing 
138 


GOVERNMENT 

but  dials  of  similarity.  For  this  reason  any 
popular  national  institution  gives  you  the 
nation.  Moreover  any  ruler,  any  system, 
any  consent  has  a  tendency  to  modify  the 
future  because  he  or  it  is  advertised  and 
established.  It  is  a  factor  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  every  individual.  It  is  the  conserva- 
tive. It  tends  to  affect  the  conduct  and 
mind  of  every  one,  for  any  one  coming  in 
contact  with  it  must  conform  or  resist.  It 
is  a  challenge  to  the  individual.  It  im- 
pinges upon  him.  The  thing  changes  daily 
in  his  mind,  and  occupies  now  more,  now 
less,  of  his  activities.  In  cases  where  his 
whole  external  conduct  has  been  absorbed 
by  one  such  power  we  have  absolute  rule, 
religious  or  military,  and  a  uniform  popu- 
lation. If  there  be  a  single  predominating 
power  which  has  not  yet  completely  con- 
quered, we  have  in  some  form  or  another  a 
record  of  its  growth  by  a  tendency  toward 
absolutism. 

The  American  people  have  been  growing 
strikingly  uniform,  owing  to  their  one  occu- 
pation,—  business,  their  one  passion, — a 
desire  for  money.  They  are  divided  by  their 
system  of  politics  into  two  great  categories, 
and  hence  we  see  the  two  opposing  Bosses, 
little  nodes  of  power  representing  this  iden- 
139 


GOVERNMENT 

tity  of  consciousness  in  each  of  the  two  great 
categories  of  the  population,  Republicans 
and  Democrats.  If  you  could  cut  open  the 
consciousness  of  one  thousand  Americans 
and  examine  it  with  a  microscope,  you  could 
set  up  our  government  with  great  ease. 

Let  us  concede  for  the  sake  of  argument 
that  the  full  development  of  individual  char- 
acter and  intellect  is  the  aim  of  life. 

Now  in  so  far  as  individuals  are  devel- 
oped, they  differ  from  each  other.  We 
ought  then  to  be  distressed  by  any  identity 
whatever  found  in  the  heads  of  individuals 
examined;  and  greatly  distressed  by  the 
reign  of  the  same  passion  manifested  in  the 
one  thousand  American  organisms.  You 
would  say,  '  If  this  thing  goes  on,  a  dictator 
is  absolutely  certain,'  and  then  you  would 
remember  that  you  had  heard  a  business  man 
remark  at  the  Club  the  evening  before,  that 
he  would  welcome  a  dictator  as  a  cheap 
practical  way  out  of  it. 

Let  us  now  suppose  you  to  examine  one 
thousand  English  heads.  The  first  thing 
you  would  notice  would  be  that  the  number 
was  not  large  enough  to  give  reliable  re- 
sults. Certain  types  would  be  manifest,  but 
the  special  variations  would  be  so  striking 
as  to  cloud  your  conclusions.  In  all  these 
140 


GOVERNMENT 

heads  there  would  be  spots  of  a  density 
nowhere  found  in  America,  but  the  sponta- 
neous variations  outside  and  round  about 
them  would  be  magnificent.  You  would 
say,  "These  spots  represent  different  kinds 
of  conservatism.  This  one  is  reverence 
for  the  church,  that  one  for  the  army,  a 
third  for  the  judiciary.  They  represent 
prejudice,  but  they  also  represent  stability, 
a  stability  that  is  the  resultant  of  a  thou- 
sand positive  and  various  forces.  These 
spots  hold  England  together  and  give  scope 
to  free  government.  The  world  never  has 
done  and  never  can  do  better  than  this. 
These  individuals  are  developed.  The  line 
of  force  of  one  man  passes  through  one  in- 
stitution, that  of  the  next  man  through  the 
next.  No  force,  no  passion,  can  make  them 
all  alike  at  any  one  time.  They  are  an- 
chored by  the  Middle  Ages.  They  are  fluid 
and  free  in  the  present.  The  only  hope  for 
freedom  in  the  individual  lies  in  the  exis- 
tence of  different  sorts  of  institutions." 

It  is  true  that  English  society  is  like  a 
menagerie,  or  rather  like  one  of  those  col- 
lections of  different  animals,  all  in  one  cage, 
seen  at  the  circus.  Every  one  of  these  ani- 
mals is  trained  to  regard  the  rights  of  the 
rest.  Diversity  is  in  itself  a  good.  A  col- 
141 


GOVERNMENT 

lege  of  Jesuits  is  a  protection  to  liberty  if  it 
is  set  down  in  Denver.  The  Jesuits  are  not 
money-mad.  It  is  an  education  for  a  Den- 
ver child  to  see  a  new  kind  of  man.  You 
will  conclude,  as  some  philosophers  are  now 
concluding,  that  to  have  free  government 
you  must  encourage  institutions  —  and  you 
will  be  wrong. 

The  fundamental  reason  why  you  are 
wrong  is  that  these  beneficent  institutions 
are  what  is  left  of  the  activity  of  people 
who  believed  in  them  for  their  own  sake. 
You  can  no  more  imitate  one  of  them,  or 
catch  the  power  of  one  of  them,  than  you 
can  set  up  a  king  here  to  repel  an  invasion. 
You  yourself  believe  in  individualism.  Go 
straight  for  that,  and  leave  it  to  erect  its 
bulwarks  in  what  form  it  may. 

A  multiplication  of  institutions  then  serves 
two  contradictory  purposes.  It  limits  the 
individual,  creates  black  spots  of  prejudice 
and  unreason  in  him ;  but  on  the  other  hand 
it  encourages  a  free  development  of  the  in- 
dividual outside  of  those  spots.  It  creates 
types,  and  types  are  mutually  protective. 
This  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  free 
government  results  from  a  segregation  of  the 
government  into  provinces,  which  cannot  all 
be  captured,  at  one  time,  by  one  force. 
142 


GOVERNMENT 

The  highly  intelligent  and  artificial  sepa- 
ration of  our  government  into  the  branches 
of  Executive,  Legislative,  and  Judicial  was 
in  a  sense  an  attempt  to  get  free  government 
by  the  erection  of  independent  institutions. 
But  these  were  never  strong  enough  to  cre- 
ate types  (we  have  hardly  the  type  of  judge 
among  us);  and  certainly  no  attachment  to 
any  part,  but  the  sacredness  of  the  entire 
system,  has  preserved  it.  It  was  the  senti- 
ment attaching  to  the  single  idea  of  a  cen- 
tral government. 

It  is  to  institutions  that  the  consent  to  be 
governed  is  given.  The  consent  is  always 
a  highly  complex  affair.  It  implies  a  civil- 
ization. It  is  qualified,  limited,  infinitely 
diversified,  and  is  in  every  case  regulated 
by  historic  fact.  For  instance,  under  a  lim- 
ited monarchy,  it  is  a  consent  to  be  gov- 
erned by  a  particular  dynasty  after  special 
ceremonies,  tempered  by  some  priesthood, 
subject  to  such  and  such  customs,  —  each 
and  all  existing  in  the  imagination  of  the 
subject.  For  government  is  entirely  a  mat- 
ter of  the  imagination,  and  it  is  inconceivable 
that  it  should  ever  be  anything  else.  The 
English  have  spent  two  centuries  in  impress- 
ing the  imagination  of  India  with  the  vision 
of  English  power.  A  violation  by  the  gov- 
H3 


GOVERNMENT 

emment,  no  matter  how  strong,  of  the  popu- 
lar imagination,  an  assumption  of  power  in 
a  field  not  yet  subdued,  always  brings  on 
riots.  The  Persians  resented  furiously  the 
creation  of  a  tobacco  monopoly.  The  Sul- 
tan had  to  rescind  it.  The  Americans  threw 
the  tea  into  the  harbor. 

The  forms  and  modes  by  which  govern- 
ment is  carried  on  are  the  record  of  things 
to  which  people  have  consented,  and  hence 
become  important,  become  symbols  so  iden- 
tified with  power  that  almost  all  historical 
writing  deals  with  them  as  entities.  The 
power  of  the  symbols  in  any  case  varies 
inversely  to  the  power  of  the  people  for  self- 
government,  that  is,  to  the  average  differen- 
tiation between  individuals ;  or  to  put  the 
thing  the  other  way,  the  extent  to  which  a 
man  will  permit  another  to  rule  him  de- 
pends upon  his  incapacity  to  rule  himself. 

The  great  unifying  forces  have  always 
been  regarded  as  dangers  to  free  govern- 
ment. War  makes  a  nation  a  unit.  It 
cannot  be  conducted  by  individualism.  Re- 
ligion condenses  power.  That  is  the  rea- 
son why  our  ancestors  were  so  afraid  of  a 
State  church.  Commerce  has  generally  been 
thought  a  blessing  because  commerce  gives 
scope  to  individualism.  It  enriches  and 
144 


GOVERNMENT 

educates.  Yet  commerce  itself  may  bring 
in  tyranny.  Witness  Venice.  Commerce 
has  centralized  our  government.  Anything 
that  affects  everybody's  mind  with  the  same 
appeal  strengthens  government  and  makes 
for  unity.  A  nation  only  exists  by  virtue 
of  such  general  appeals.  It  is  inside  of  and 
subordinate  to  this  general  unity  of  feeling 
that  individualism  must  go  on.  The  rulers 
of  mankind  are  men  who  have  got  control  of 
the  symbols,  of  the  institutions,  which  stood 
in  the  imagination  of  the  people  as  most 
important,  and  who  by  manipulating  them 
extended  their  range  over  the  popular  imag- 
ination. Or  to  put  the  thing  a  little  differ- 
ently, the  passions  of  the  people  are  reflected 
in  ever-changing  institutions.  The  people 
seize  a  man  and  force  him  to  do  their 
bidding  and  rule  them  in  such  manner 
as  to  assuage  their  passions.  They  make  a 
saint  out  of  Lincoln,  and  a  devil  out  of 
Torquemada. 

If  a  man  seems  to  be  a  great  man,  and 
seems  to  be  leading  the  people,  it  is  be- 
cause he  knows  the  people  better  than  they 
know  themselves.  There  was  never  a  people 
yet  that  did  not  in  this  sense  govern  them- 
selves, being  themselves  governed  by  the 
resultant  of  their  dominant  passions.  The 
w  145 


GOVERNMENT 

Southern  Pacific  Railroad  has  for  years 
owned  the  State  of  California  as  completely 
as  if  it  had  bought  it  from  a  tyrant  who 
ruled  over  a  population  of  slaves.  It  was 
done  by  the  purchase  of  votes.  In  so  far  as 
virtue  shall  regain  predominance  in  the 
breast  of  the  voter  and  set  him  free,  virtue 
will  replace  money  in  the  voting,  and  set 
free  the  State. 

Universal  suffrage  is  a  mode  and  a  sym- 
bol. Under  certain  conditions  of  education 
people  must  have  it.  Under  others  they 
cannot  have  it.  But  whether  they  have  it 
or  not,  they  will  be  ruled  by  their  ruling 
passion,  and  if  this  renders  them  alike  in 
character,  their  government  will  be  a  ty- 
ranny. If  the  reign  of  the  passion  be  tem- 
pered, the  reign  of  the  tyrant  will  be 
tempered.  Express  the  thing  in  terms  of 
human  feeling  (and  what  else  is  there!')  and 
universal  suffrage  is  seen  as  a  quantity 
n^gligeahle. 

It  is  thus  apparent  that  there  is  no  insti- 
tution that  cannot  easily  be  made  to  operate 
to  a  contradictory  end.  The  criminal  courts 
here  have  been  used  to  collect  debt.  There 
is  no  wickedness  to  which  the  enginery  of 
the  Christian  Church  has  not  at  one  time 
or  another  been  lent.  The  passions  of  a 
146 


GOVERNMENT 

period  run  its  institutions  as  easily  as  a 
stream  turns  any  sort  of  a  mill.  To-day  the 
United  States  Senate  is  a  millionaires'  club. 
To-morrow  the  Stock  Exchange  may  become 
a  church. 

Now  what  is  an  institution  ? 

It  is  a  custom  which  receives  an  assent 
because  it  is  a  custom.  Man  has  always 
been  ruled  by  custom.  The  notion  that 
there  was  a  time  when  disputes  were  settled 
by  fighting,  and  that  arbitration  came  in  as 
a  matter  of  convenience,  stands  on  the  same 
sort  of  footing  as  Rousseau's  social  contract. 
It  is  an  academic  jeu  d esprit.  In  looking 
back  over  history  all  we  see  is  custom,  and 
farther  back,  still  custom.  All  the  fighting 
of  savages  is  regulated  by  custom  and  always 
has  been  regulated  by  custom.  Nay,  the 
bees  and  the  ants  are  ruled  by  custom.  The 
idea  of  custom  is  the  one  idea  that  the  gen- 
ius of  Kipling  led  him  to  see  in  the  jungle. 

Now  what  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  this 
regard  for  custom .-'  At  the  bottom  of  cus- 
tom is  non-self-regarding  impulse.  Man  is 
both  selfish  and  unselfish,  but  it  makes  a 
great  difference  whether  we  regard  him  pri- 
7narily  as  one  thing  or  the  other.  The  sci- 
entists, owing  to  their  study  of  the  lower 
animals,  have  tried  to  explain  man  on  the 
147 


GOVERNMENT 

selfish  hypothesis  and  have  made  a  mystery 
of  him.  They  say  "He  must  eat  or  die; 
therefore,  he  must  be  primarily  egoistic." 
And  they  attempt  to  explain  progress  by  the 
expanding  of  egoism  to  include,  first  the 
family,  then  the  tribe,  then  the  nation,  and 
finally  mankind.  Society  according  to  them 
is  a  convention  of  egoism,  a  compromise,  a 
joint-stock  company.  Religion  is  a  matter 
of  ghosts  and  ancestor  worship,  not  fully 
explained  yet.  Note  that  this  whole  view 
depends  upon  a  dogma  that  man  must  be 
primarily  selfish  because  he  must  eat.  It  is 
fair  enough  to  retort  with  a  paradox.  Man 
absolutely  selfish  could  not  survive.  Man 
absolutely  unselfish  would  thrive  splendidly. 
The  individuals  would  support  each  other. 

But  let  us  start  square  and  remember  that 
it  is  a  question  of  science.  Take  the  other 
hypothesis.  The  horse  runs  in  herds  and 
propagates  his  species  because  he  is  fond  of 
the  species.  Incidentally  he  gets  protected. 
It  is  through  the  illusion  that  he  loves  his 
fellows  that  his  own  welfare  is  secured. 
Non-self-regardant  impulse  is  at  the  bottom, 
self-protection  the  result. 

It  is  the  same  with  every  human  institu- 
tion.    Non-self-regardant  impulse  is  at  the 
bottom  of  all  regard  for  law.     We  have  seen 
.  148 


GOVERNMENT 

that  Democracy  is  organized  altruism,  but 
there  was  never  a  government  that  did  not 
profess  to  be  organized  altruism.  You  can- 
not bring  men  together  on  any  other  plea, 
nor  hold  them  together  by  any  other  tie.  It 
is  only  in  so  far  as  altruism  in  conduct  exists 
that  progress  is  possible.  If  the  men  will 
not  stop  fighting  at  sundown,  they  have  no 
institutions.     They  perish. 

The  regard  that  every  custom  receives 
from  the  individual  who  supports  it  is  a  non- 
self-regarding  emotion.  From  the  ceremo- 
nials of  savages,  through  the  custom  of  the 
Frenchman  who  lifts  his  hat  as  a  funeral 
passes,  to  the  feeling  of  Kant  as  he  con- 
templated the  moral  law,  the  element  is  the 
same.  It  is  reverence.  It  is  respect.  It 
is  self-surrender. 

But  reverence  may  become  intensified  into 
fear.  The  imagination  of  the  worshipper 
curls  over  like  a  wave.  It  looks  back  at 
him  and  frightens  him,  and  when  this  hap- 
pens we  call  it  Superstition.  The  pain  of 
it,  like  all  pain,  like  the  distress  of  insan- 
ity, comes  wholly  from  the  fact  that  it  is  a 
self-regarding  emotion,  it  is  a  disease.  Man 
in  every  stage  of  his  culture  is  liable  to 
this  disease.  Want  of  food  or  tyranny, 
bad  water  or  bad  government,  brings  on 
^  149 


GOVERNMENT 

this  trouble.  Every  country  and  every  age 
shows  forms  of  it :  and  very  naturally,  the 
savage  who  is  subject  by  reason  of  hardships 
to  many  diseases,  shows  terrible  forms  of 
this  disease  of  superstition.  This  is  the 
chief  fact  that  the  scientists  have  seen  in 
the  savage.  These  savants,  holding  the 
egoism  of  man  as  their  major  thought,  have 
through  their  ignorance  of  human  nature  been 
led  to  base  their  explanation  of  the  religion 
of  mankind  upon  a  disease  of  the  savage. 

The  opposite  explanation  stares  them  in 
the  face.  We  all  know  in  a  general  way 
that  the  New  Testament  civilized  Europe. 
The  book  is  a  mere  cryptogram  of  all  pos- 
sible altruism,  and  therefore  fits  the  soul  of 
man.  Give  two  men  the  New  Testament 
—  and  each  man  sees  himself  in  it,  and  it 
affects  each  one  differently.  By  developing 
and  unfolding  the  character  and  emotions  of 
each  according  to  the  law  of  his  individual 
growth,  the  book  differentiates  them  at  once. 
The  more  unhappy  a  man  is  the  more  he 
needs  it.  Oppress  a  man  or  put  him  in  jail, 
let  him  lead  a  life  of  self-indulgence,  or 
isolation,  and  he  grows  quasi-religious;  the 
altruistic  emotion  has  not  been  expended  in 
intercourse  with  his  fellows,  and  it  accumu- 
lates. This  book  then,  by  focussing  the  alt ru- 
150 


GOVERNMENT 

ism  in  each  individual  of  many  generations 
of  men,  by  being  perpetually  rediscovered, 
by  existing  as  a  constant  force  differentiat- 
ing individuals  and  so  undoing  the  tyranny 
of  institution  after  institution  founded  upon 
itself,  gradually  got  itself  enacted  into  in- 
ternational law,  into  custom,  into  sentiment, 
and  into  municipal  rule,  and  has  been  on 
the  whole  the  controlling  force  in  Western 
Europe  during  the  last  eighteen  centuries. 
Its  symbols  express  the  constant  factor  in 
human  nature.  It  is  only  in  so  far  as  a 
book  does  this  that  it  is  remembered  at  all. 

Of  course,  when  a  custom  arises  it  is 
turned  on  the  instant  into  something  that 
can  be  used  by  egoism,  and  here  comes  the 
pivot  of  the  matter.  Custom  renders  men 
similar  to  each  other.  The  letter  killeth. 
But  the  letter  does  much  more  than  kill. 
It  educates,  it  trains,  it  transmits.  Hence 
the  two  contradictory  functions  of  an  insti- 
tution which  we  found  at  work  in  England, 
the  one  to  educate,  the  other  to  limit. 

In  studying  the  effect  of  institutions  upon 
the  individual,  the  whole  hierarchy  of  nature 
must  be  reviewed  at  once.  We  have  noth- 
ing to  guide  us  in  our  study  of  the  animals 
except  our  knowledge  of  man,  but  we  have 
much  to  find  in  that  study  which  will  en- 
151 


GOVERNMENT 

large  and  illustrate  that  knowledge.  Every 
naturalist  and  every  sociologist  should  receive 
his  preliminary  training  in  the  political  arena, 
and  every  politician  in  the  greenhouse  and 
the  menagerie. 

Let  us  look  at  the  social  life  of  the  ants. 

The  ant  seems  to  show  a  stage  of  progress 
in  which  the  individuals  have  grown  alike 
through  a  slavish  observance  of  certain  in- 
stitutions. It  is  certain  that  the  ant  is  a 
ritualistic  being,  formal,  narrow,  intolerant, 
incapable  of  new  ideas  or  private  enterprise. 
He  hates  any  one  differing  from  himself, 
whether  more  or  less  virtuous.  He  would 
regard  any  suggested  improvement  in  the 
arrangement  of  his  house  as  a  sacrilege. 
He  works  constantly  for  the  public  with  a 
devotion  that  nothing  but  religious  zeal  can 
explain,  and  is  in  his  own  limited  way  com- 
pletely happy.  But  the  tyranny  of  public 
opinion,  the  subserviency  to  a  State  church 
goes  far  to  make  him  contemptible. 

This  is  the  worst  that  an  institution  can 
do.  The  individual  is  crushed.  The  pri- 
meval reverence  for  custom  seen  in  the  ants 
has  crystallized  without  getting  developed 
and  specialized  into  its  higher  form  of  rev- 
erence for  the  individual  ant.  He  is  a  type 
of  arrested  development. 
152 


GOVERNMENT 

The  natural  history  of  religion  is  then  to 
be  sought  in  a  reverence  for  custom  that 
gradually  specializes  itself  into  a  regard  for 
the  individual.  If  these  things  are  true, 
the  advancement  of  any  civilization  may  be 
measured  by  the  extent  in  which  the  rights 
of  individuals  are  held  sacred.  And  this  is 
what  we  have  always  been  taught. 

Government  was  in  its  origin  indistin- 
guishable from  religion,  and  down  to  the 
latest  day  of  time,  the  fluctuating  institu- 
tions of  man  will  record  this  kinship  be- 
tween ritual  and  law. 

The  scientists,  in  trying  to  explain  reli- 
gion and  progress  as  the  result  of  an  egoism 
gradually  expanding  itself  to  a  regard  for 
mankind,  have  been  pulling  at  the  wrong 
end  of  the  cocoon.  The  thread  unwound  a 
bit  and  then  broke;  unwound  again  and 
again  broke.  They  were  puzzling  them- 
selves over  a  conception  fundamentally  un- 
scientific and  at  war  with  their  own  first 
principles. 

The  genesis  of  the  emotions  proceeds  like 
other  developments  from  the  simple  towards 
the  complex.  The  notion  that  the  egoism 
of  man  gradually  expanded  so  as  to  include 
the  whole  human  race  in  a  love  which  was 
in  reality  a  love  of  himself,  assumes  that 
153 


GOVERNMENT 

this  large  love  is  the  sum  of  lesser  loves. 
It  fixes  the  attention  on  the  objects  of  human 
feeling,  and  not  upon  the  character  of  the 
feeling  itself.  This  character  is  the  thing 
to  be  studied.  When  we  contrast  the  reli- 
gious and  social  feelings  of  the  civilized 
man  with  those  of  the  savage  we  see  the 
same  specialization  and  complexity  in  the 
emotions  themselves  which  is  traceable  in 
any  higher  development.  The  forms,  argu- 
ments, theories,  customs  by  which  the  feel- 
ing is  expressed,  show  an  ever- increasing 
refinement  of  sympathy.  We  are  not  ap- 
proaching a  general  and  vague  emotion  built 
up  out  of  lesser  regards  for  particular  peo- 
ple. We  are  approaching  a  stage  of  differ- 
entiation, of  analysis,  a  stage  of  the  personal 
application  of  that  same  altruism  which  ap- 
pears in  its  lower  form  as  blind  worship  and 
self-abasement  before  some  fetich.  The 
utility  of  this  emotion,  in  whatever  stage  of 
its  development,  is  a  consideration  that  may 
justify  it  to  the  philosopher,  but  which  is 
not  the  primton  7tiobile  in  the  breast  of  him 
that  has  it.  The  whole  history  of  man 
shows  that  progress  comes  in  the  shape  of 
an  increasing  tender-heartedness  which  can 
give  no  lucid  account  of  itself,  because  it  is 
an  organic  process. 

IS4 


GOVERNMENT 

The  learned  classes  are  apt  to  approach  a 
problem  in  its  most  difficult  form.  Out  of 
travellers'  tales  about  man  in  the  South  Sea 
Islands,  the  sociologist  evolves  a  theory  of 
religion.  Take  up  a  book  on  the  natural 
history  of  religion  and  you  will  find  enough 
learned  citations  about  the  Hurons  and  the 
Esquimaux  and  the  Thibet  tribes  to  furnish 
the  library  of  Pantagruel.  Now  the  regard 
of  a  savage  for  his  idol  is  a  very  obscure 
question  of  psychology.  Ten  years  of  youth 
spent  among  a  tribe  would  not  be  too  long  a 
period  in  which  to  lay  the  foundations  for 
an  intelligent  guess  at  the  facts,  let  alone 
their  significance. 

Meanwhile,  the  actual  genealogy  of  our 
own  religious  feelings  is  neglected  as  too 
familiar.  Yet  the  spiritual  history  of  that 
race  which  gave  Europe  many  of  its  reli- 
gions, is  better  known  than  any  other  his- 
tory of  a  like  antiquity.  The  point  of  view 
and  feeling  about  life  which  has  given  us 
our  own  experience  of  religion  was  devel- 
oped in  the  Jew.  The  Old  Testament  is 
the  place  in  which  to  study  the  growth  and 
meaning  of  the  only  religious  feeling  that 
we  are  sure  we  understand.  The  history 
of  the  Jews  is  the  history  of  a  single  over- 
powering emotion  which  appears  in  its  two 


GOVERNMENT 

forms,  —  so  identical  in  content  that  you 
may  often  find  them  both  in  the  same  sen- 
tence, both  in  the  same  verse  of  Isaiah  or 
Psalm  of  David,  —  prostration  before  the 
Lord  of  Hosts,  compassion  for  the  poor  and 
the  oppressed.  This  passion  of  altruism 
which  gave  the  prophets  their  terrible  power 
is  the  legacy  of  the  Jew  to  the  world.  The 
emotion  of  self-abasement  and  self-sacrifice 
and  the  emotion  of  love  towards  others,  are 
one  thing.  This,  in  its  lower  forms,  leads 
to  self -mutilation  and  incantations;  in  its 
higher  forms,  it  becomes  embodied  by  the 
prophetic  fury  of  great  poets  into  the  idea 
of  a  Messiah  who  shall  be  both  savior  and 
sacrifice.  There  is  only  one  passion  at  work 
in  all  these  great  protagonists  of  human 
nature,  in  Nathan,  Elijah,  Jeremiah  and  in 
the  innumerable  prophets  who  confronted 
the  arbitrary  power  of  the  kings.  These 
men  stood  for  righteousness  and  showed  an 
intensity  of  moral  courage  which  nothing 
but  compassion  has  ever  engendered,  and 
nothing  but  faith  has  ever  expressed.  The 
rags  and  the  self  surrender,  the  purity  and 
the  power,  the  belief  that  they  spoke  not  of 
themselves  but  for  the  Lord,  have  been  the 
same  in  all  ages.  It  is  impossible  to  feel 
compassion  in  this  degree  and  not  express  it 
'56 


GOVERNMENT 

in  this  manner.  All  just  anger  is  compas- 
sion. The  terrible  wrath  of  these  men  is  as 
comprehensible  as  their  hymns  or  their  tri- 
umph. There  is  no  child  that  reads  Isaiah 
whose  nature  does  not  respond  to  him,  be- 
cause the  course  of  feeling  in  him  is  true  to 
life.  Between  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
New  we  see  a  perfectly  coherent  develop- 
ment of  the  same  passion  of  the  same  race 
into  its  higher  kind.  Both  forms  of  it  have 
changed.  In  the  New  Testament  the  love 
has  become  specialized  into  that  particular 
and  especial  regard  for  the  soul  of  each 
individual  man  for  which  we  have  no  coun- 
terpart ;  and  the  prostration,  the  adoration 
for  God  the  Father,  the  identification  of  the 
individual  with  God  the  Father,  has  received 
expression  in  forms  which  one  can  refer  to 
but  not  describe.  The  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  within  you. 

That  modern  philanthropy  which  has  been 
overcoming  the  world  during  the  last  cen- 
tury and  has  put  a  spirit  of  religion  into 
politics,  is  expressed  in  ten  thousand  dog- 
mas and  formulas.  These  things  are  the 
hieroglyphics  of  the  most  complex  period  in 
history,  but  they  all  read  Love. 

The  love  of  man  for  his  fellows  is  the 
substantial  content  of  every  ideal,  of  every 
157 


GOVERNMENT 

reform.  In  so  far  as  any  political  cry  is  val- 
uable, it  represents  this  and  nothing  more. 
Liberty,  Equality  and  Fraternity,  The  Dec- 
laration of  Independence,  Utilitarianism, 
Fourierism,  Socialism,  Prohibition,  Chris- 
tian Science  and  the  Salvation  Army  carry 
the  same  message ;  and  it  is  only  because  of 
this  truth,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is 
always  wrapped  up  in  every  kind  of  false- 
hood, that  they  move  the  world  forward. 
Take  socialism.  This  thing  is  the  logical 
outcome  of  the  passion  of  pity  at  work  in 
men  who  believe  that  the  desire  for  property 
is  the  controlling  factor  in  human  arrange- 
ments. The  selfishness  of  the  individual 
has  been  assumed  as  a  fundamental  law  in 
that  school  of  thought,  which  has  been  domi- 
nating all  our  thought,  and  which  we  habit- 
ually accept  as  final.  It  receives  support 
from  a  superficial  view  of  human  nature,  and 
time  out  of  mind  has  been  the  belief  of  shal- 
low people.  But  the  great  intellect  and  the 
great  labor  of  the  socialists  have  been  un- 
able to  make  any  impression  upon  the  mind 
of  a  man.  We  know  that  their  reasoning 
is  foolish.  It  is  to  the  heart  that  their  ap- 
peal is  made.  Bellamy's  book  sells  by  the 
hundred  thousand  to  tender-hearted  people. 
It  is  a  plea  for  humanity.  It  is  Uncle 
X58 


GOVERNMENT 

Tom's  Cabin.  The  function  of  Socialism  is 
clear.  It  is  a  religious  reaction  going  on  in 
an  age  which  thinks  in  terms  of  money.  We 
are  very  nearly  at  the  end  of  it,  because  we 
are  very  nearly  at  the  end  of  the  age.  Some 
people  believe  they  hate  the  wealth  of  the 
millionaire.  They  denounce  corporations 
and  trusts,  as  if  these  things  had  hurt  them. 
They  strike  at  the  symbol.  What  they 
really  hate  is  the  irresponsible  rapacity 
which  these  things  typify,  and  which  noth- 
ing but  moral  forces  will  correct.  In  so  far 
as  people  seek  the  cure  in  property-laws 
they  are  victims  of  the  plague.  The  cure 
will  come  entirely  from  the  other  side;  for 
as  soon  as  the  millionaires  begin  to  exert 
and  enjoy  the  enormous  power  for  good 
which  they  possess,  everybody  will  be  glad 
they  have  the  money. 

Socialism  was  useful,  but  as  a  theory  it 
was  fated  from  the  beginning,  because  its 
prophets  and  saints  are  themselves  spurred 
on  by  a  different  motive  from  that  which 
they  evoke  in  others.  They  offer  us  a  reli- 
gion that  assumes  that  human  nature  is  other 
than  it  is,  a  religion  not  based  upon  self- 
sacrifice,  and  so  not  based  upon  an  appeal  to 
primary  passion,  a  religion  beseeching  us  to 
make  other  people  comfortable.  Now  the 
'59 


GOVERNMENT 

only  motive  which  will  make  men  labor  for 
the  comfort  of  others,  is  a  belief  that  this  is 
the  quickest  way  of  saving  their  souls.  If 
souls  are  to  be  saved  only  through  their  own 
unselfish  activity,  then  it  is  a  lie  to  hold  up 
property  as  a  goal.  The  laboring  man  can 
be  made  happy  only  by  the  same  means  as 
the  merchant.  They  must  be  saved  together. 
The  matter  of  the  physical  support  of  the 
individual  follows  in  the  wake  of  a  regard 
for  his  soul,  but  never  precedes  it.  The 
awakening  of  the  spirit  of  individualism 
will  bring  support  to  the  artisan  by  bring- 
ing in  hand  work.  The  machine  work  with 
which  we  have  been  content  represents  a 
loss  of  religion  in  the  buyer  proportionate 
to  the  selfishness  of  the  times.  No  system 
based  on  thrift  will  displace  it,  but  any 
movement  based  on  self-sacrifice  will  tend 
to  correct  it.  While  socialism  is  worrying 
out  the  proof  that  a  wise  distribution  of 
property  will  bring  in  virtue  and  happiness, 
other  and  director  formulations  of  the  truth 
will  have  seized  the  spirits  of  men  and  saved 
the  people. 

The  balance  of  altruism  in  the  people  of  a 
country,  preserved  in  the  form  of  practical 
self-control  (no   matter  under  what  name), 
gives  the  wealth  and  power  of  the  country. 
i6o 


GOVERNMENT 

Good  government  then  consists  in  customs 
which  differentiate  people.  They  represent 
a  permission  to  each  man  to  be  different 
from  his  neighbor.  They  are  the  record  of 
what  once  was  love,  and  now  is  law. 

Bad  government  consists  in  institutions 
which  render  men  similar  through  some  self- 
interest,  some  superstition. 

Let  us  take  a  few  examples  at  random 
from  history,  and  see  whether  everything  of 
permanent  value  to  the  race  is  not  merely 
a  different  form  of  expression  for  the  same 
ideal. 

Napoleon  is  a  type  of  selfishness.  The 
focus  of  his  almost  illimitable  intelligence 
fell  within  himself.  He  was  so  self-centred 
that  he  did  not  precipitate  all  the  passion 
which  supported  him  upon  an  idea.  He  did 
much,  but  he  could  not  transcend  the  laws 
of  psychology  or  escape  the  insecurity  they 
dealt  him  out.  He  was  a  great  reactionary, 
living  in  an  age  of  progress,  a  great  ego- 
ist in  an  age  of  altruism,  a  great  criminal. 
The  whole  of  Europe  had  hardly  strength 
enough  to  shut  him  up.  He  went  down  fi- 
nally, and  yet  before  he  went  down,  he  had 
stood  for  civilization  in  every  country  he 
touched  by  establishing  law.  He  gave 
France  his  code  and  his  bureaux,  things 
"  i6i 


GOVERNMENT 

greater  than  his  dynasty.  He  made  use  of 
the  enlightenment,  the  expert  intellect  of 
France  to  establish  order,  and  became  a 
great  educator  through  his  institutions,  his 
genius  for  administration.  His  worshippers 
are  so  struck  with  this  side  of  his  charac- 
ter that  they  forgive  him  his  crimes.  For 
our  admiration  is  chained  to  the  educator. 
Every  great  man  is  a  great  educator,  and 
there  is  no  greatness  but  this.  The  great 
man  represents,  draws  out,  projects,  and 
establishes  the  non-self-regarding  part,  the 
intellectual  apparatus  of  others,  and  those 
who  do  it  by  the  establishment  of  law  and 
order  receive  their  tribute  as  civilizers. 
The  saints  serve  the  same  end.  They  speak 
a  language  different  from  that  of  the  law- 
givers, yet  their  function  is  the  same.  The 
part  a  man  plays  in  the  formal  government 
of  his  times  depends  on  circumstance.  It 
seems  to  be  governed  by  the  ratio  of  his 
altruism  to  that  of  his  contemporaries. 
People  will  not  tolerate  a  man  who  is  too 
good  or  too  bad.  Had  Napoleon  lived  in  an 
age  of  retrogression,  very  likely  he  would 
have  died  upon  the  throne.  Had  he  been 
less  self-seeking  than  he  was,  had  he  pos- 
sessed for  instance  the  imagination  of 
Washington,  very  likely  the  French  would 
162 


GOVERNMENT 

have  deposed  him  sooner,  but  in  the  end 
the  memory  of  him  would  have  educated 
France. 

For  this  is  the  work  of  heroes.  Where  a 
leader  has  ideas  that  are  more  unselfish  than 
those  of  his  time,  he  is  deposed,  poisoned, 
or  ridiculed,  and  his  value  as  an  educational 
force  may  be  increased  by  any  of  these 
things.  Socrates  deliberately  kept  out  of 
politics  for  many  years,  knowing  that  if  he 
took  part,  his  sense  of  justice  would  lead  to 
his  execution,  and  fearing  to  throw  away  his 
life;  he  finally  expended  it  with  such  ability 
as  to  make  every  atom  count.  The  scholars 
have  not  understood  his  Apology  because 
they  could  not  fathom  the  instinct  of  the 
agitator.  It  is  the  same  with  the  martyrs, 
with  the  Quakers  in  Puritan  New  England, 
with  the  Anti-Slavery  people.  Their  con- 
duct was  governed  by  the  truest  understand- 
ing of  how  to  draw  out  and  develop  the 
conscience  of  others.  The  man  who  dies 
for  his  country  does  no  more. 

Another  gigantic  educator  was  Bismarck. 
To  have  welded  the  squabbling  principali- 
ties of  Germany  into  an  Empire  within  a 
lifetime  is  one  of  the  achievements  of  his- 
tory. But  Bismarck  held  the  trump  card. 
He  had  a  cause  to  serve.  His  early  work 
163 


GOVERNMENT 

must  have  been  his  strongest ;  for  since  the 
war  with  France,  patriotism  has  become  the 
curse  of  Germany.  It  is  caked  into  fanati- 
cism, and  is  being  used  by  autocracy  to  ruin 
intellect.  This  is  the  mystical  yet  relent- 
less punishment  for  the  element  which  was 
not  patriotism  but  thrift  in  their  conduct. 
The  Germans  must  be  great  and  unified  and 
recover  Alsace  for  their  honor.  But  what 
did  they  want  with  the  French  milliards.-' 
They  mulcted  France  to  spare  their  pockets, 
and  fastened  upon  themselves  the  personal 
hatred  of  the  French  peasant,  which  gives 
them  William  11.  for  a  ruler.  They  looked 
upon  property  as  power.  Had  they  seen 
clearly  that  power  is  nothing  but  sentiment, 
they  would  have  sown  peace. 

One  reason  why  Holland  lost  her  suprem- 
acy was  because  she  came  to  regard  money 
as  power.  She  grasped  the  symbol.  For  a 
decline  sets  in  as  soon  as  selfishness  has 
reached  such  a  point  that  any  of  these  sym- 
bols are  worshipped.  Witness  Spain,  where 
the  gold  of  Peru  ruined  the  Spaniards  by 
making  them  individually  selfish. 

In  the  long  run  virtue  and  vice  contend 
over  national  wealth,  the  first  collecting,  the 
second  dissipating.  Witness  Cuba.  Wit- 
ness Ireland.  China  is  wrecked  by  private 
164 


, GOVERNMENT 

greed.  In  the  last  analysis  it  is  a  matter  of 
personal  virtue. 

The  magnificent  intellect  and  self-control 
epitomized  in  Roman  Government,  took  cen- 
turies to  perish.  Is  it  a  wonder  these  people 
conquered  the  world  ? 

The  United  States  has  been  held  together 
by  English  virtue,  and  there  was  so  much  of 
it  in  the  race,  that  a  few  generations  of 
money-changers  could  not  ruin  us.  We 
had,  not  only  the  creed,  but  the  beliefs  of 
English  liberty.  The  future  of  England 
depends  upon  her  perception  of  this  truth 
that  power  is  sentiment.  The  Venezuela 
trouble  showed  her  that  her  selfish  conduct 
in  1861  made  her  empire  in  1896  insecure. 
The  spread  of  England's  empire  has  been 
due  to  a  practice  in  dealing  with  the  imagi- 
nation of  others.  Establish  by  force,  de- 
velop by  the  organized  altruism  of  good 
government,  protect  by  display  of  force. 

This  system  will  not  apply  here.  We  are 
the  youngest  nation  and  the  most  naif. 
We  are  at  the  mercy  of  wise  or  unwise  treat- 
ment. But  we  can  no  more  be  fooled  than 
a  child.  No  display  of  force  could  touch 
our  imagination  or  do  more  than  irritate  us. 
Our  feelings  must  be  directly  engaged  by 
means  not  known  to  diplomacy  or  to  inter- 
i6s 


GOVERNMENT 

national  law.  Let  England  take  a  high 
tone.  She  must  not  only  seem  but  be  un- 
selfish towards  us,  and  she  will  master  the 
globe. 

There  is  one  result  from  the  fact  that  gov- 
ernment is  a  matter  of  imagination  which  is 
wholly  satisfactory.  Once  set  up  a  scheme 
of  things  which  people  approve  of  and  it 
remains.  We  shall  not  have  good  govern- 
ment in  the  United  States  till  the  people 
get  over  their  personal  dishonesty;  but  when 
we  do  get  it,  it  will  last  without  effort.  It 
will  be  harder  to  destroy  than  the  spoils 
system.  Vigilance  will  be  needed  con- 
stantly, but  action  rarely.  The  mere  an- 
nouncement of  an  abuse  will  correct  it. 


i66 


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